Electronics > Repair
Vintage chip Programmer : " Micropross ROM 3000U "
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Vince:
Thanks for that chaps.

Wow... this drive selection problem is incredibly messy and confusing !  :scared:

I am glad you understand it...stick around please !  :-DD

I now find it a miracle that floppy drives could work a tall in computers... with so much room for things to NOT work !  :-DD


Anyway... it should be simple in my programmer.
Drive was set to (D)S0, using a straight cable. 
It worked fine.... then all of a sudden did not.
.. but the drive is fine, and I tried 3 different straight cable (or twisted as well), nothing works.... so as I said it looks more like a controller issue than a drive or ribbon cable issue.
The bent pin on the connector, well I am the one who stupidly bent it, it was not bent at the time that the drive/boot failed.

There is ONE last test I can do, stupid me.... again the last and most important test I must do is test the original straight cable that came with the programmer, coupled with the DD drive set to S0.... well I know where I can find a PC to do that ! .. well, not the vintage PC sadly, but... well my main Linux PC should be just fine for that !

So let me try that out and we will soon be able to rule out (or not...) both the DD drive and its original cable. Once that's done I will have piece of mind and will embark into working on the floppy controller board....

Stay tuned...
Vince:
OK that was waste of time... my Linux PC is doing weird floppy stuff as well.
I give up, I am done for now, need a break.

I will resume work on this thing once I have finished up a few long overdue little projects that will allow me to remove some stuff from the bench, gain some space to work properly and more confortably on this bulky transformer. So far I have been in quick 'n dirty mode, but clearly we are past this stage and we are deep into this thing now. I need a longer term "bench" solution... not the current mess.. I have reached the limits of what is humanly possible.

Need to spend some time finding a decent Vintage Win9X PC that's not a proprietary thing. Need to order proto boards to tidy up the video output for the programmer, etc etc....

So the project will be on pause for a little bit the time to do all that... then it can resume with better working conditions....


Thank you for your help so far, and see you soon !  8)
m k:
Follow retiredfeline's link and its RGB(K) pin picture.
Put programmer's drive to S1 for straight cable, then it's drive B.

For straight cable and drive A you use S2, but you must also connect drive's Mtr On pin 16 to pin 10 S0.
Drives can also be single pin selected, then you can use S0 and drive itself uses its motor as it sees necessary.
Interface also used to have terminators, but quick googling didn't do any good.
So the 3.5" drive recollection I have, with clearly user accessible slide switch with stamped positions 1 and 2, may include a selection of those terminators and so the switch is very likely something else than just simple drive selection pins connection.

Included picture is a cable from earlier mentioned scrap.
The other twist I was remembering was for hard drives.

Adrian's video has a moment where he is showing a promo board of new controller supporting 4 drives.
That is the construction that was available at the beginning of times, and before any 3.5" stuff.
There all your programmer drive's S0-3 are available and Motor On is always Motor On.

With the old style controller and straight cable, it's very possible that current PC 3.5" drives can only be used as drive B.
But that is not enough if termination is present, then one drive must be connected as PC's drive A and place it as last of the cabling, if the termination selection is, like it seems, automatic.
So in that environment a cable hack seems to be inevitable, but if that actually is the case then some drive selection and termination dongles should be already available.
Vince:

--- Quote from: retiredfeline on January 09, 2023, 02:10:48 am ---Hi Vince,

There is a reason for the twisted floppy cable. Here's an explanation: https://www.nostalgianerd.com/why-are-floppy-cables-twisted/ So the twist is needed even if there is only one drive, A:

Thanks for a very entertaining story. Your persistence is legendary. I'm wishing you successful results.

--- End quote ---

Just watched the video, thanks for the pointer... so the twist goes to drive A not B !  :palm:
... except for my programmer which works with drive set as S0 yet uses a straight cable... because well, custom FDC... so when it's custom you do bacically whatever you like...

OK thanks chaps for this ton of info. Hopefully it will slowly diffuse into my brain in the next few weeks as I am clearing / preparing the bench for Season #2 of this programmer saga.

See you then....

Vince:
OK, I " fixed " it.... well,I unfucked it rather.... as I thought it was a FDC board issue....

... would you believe it but... it's perfectly possible to insert that board upside down, for it to slide all the way in, and you not noticing anything...

... would you believe it but.... once I put the board up side.. up... it now works much better !  :-DD

So the programmer can now work the disk again, it reads it at boot no worries.

Well I mean it still fails to boot of course, we are now back to problem N-1, where it cycles between BOOT 0F error and BOOT 25 error.

However after some more experiments, paying more attention.... I think it's very possible that BOOT 0F is not a boot error per se, but merely the programmer saying "OK I am now starting to boot, I will rock that floppy for a minute and tell you what ! "... then a minute later once it's done reading the disk, it returns BOOT 25.

My gut feeling is that BOOT 25 is the only genuine error code, not BOOT 0F...

So it's quite a relief... I am now out of this floppy drive selection nightmare.... cable is fine and drive too. Programmer itself needs fixing now.

So I have just finished buttoning the programmer and old PC back up, and all that mess of serial and floppy cables scattered all over then bench and more.

Stay tuned for round #2 in a few weeks probably.

It's amazing all the things we did and achieved in the first round, in just a few days / weeks.

 It started as a completely unknown black box, hopeless door stop that Google could not even find a picture of, never mind any technical info...... to where we are now.

See you soon !  >:D
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