clueless about floppy issues

Supporter (15)

12-12-2018, 22:54

Hi,

I was very excited to finally get my first MSX2 - VG 8235/20, which came with single side floppy with broken belt. I managed to replace the belt, but here is the thing. I can see the belt spinning just fine, I can see the red light on - signaling floppy activity, but I wont succeed in formatting the floppy. Each time I write "call format" , then I choose A, it's spinning, but it's strangely quiet (no disk writing noise I can hear on my Macintosh/Amiga/PC) and it would never finish After two minutes or so it's still trying to format the floppy to no avail. Any ideas, what might be wrong with my floppy drive?
The disk was earlier formatted in my Macintosh SE/30 as single (400k) floppy if it matters. Any suggestion will be appreciated.

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By Hans41

Expert (71)

13-12-2018, 13:33

Are you sure the belt isn't slipping ?

By Vampier

Prophet (2413)

13-12-2018, 23:39

That's why I bought a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD (512Kb mem mapper) or a gr8net... no more drives needed

By meits

Scribe (6544)

14-12-2018, 02:27

Is the head actually moving?

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5672)

14-12-2018, 05:35

Meits wrote:

Is the head actually moving?

Sorry, sorry. :)

By charliefrown

Supporter (15)

14-12-2018, 11:30

I think I need to check the voltage on the 4 pin Berg connector, maybe the power supply is failing. Will add video later.

By luppie

Paladin (869)

14-12-2018, 18:26

Rofl

By charliefrown

Supporter (15)

21-01-2019, 10:02

Ok guys here's some update:

I used DiskManager and dcopy to put some .dsk games on 720 kB floppy formated on my PC. No game does autoboot, giving me disk offline 10 error, however I can successfully display the content of the disk with FILES, but it fails to run any games manually. However I am able to save my basic programs to the floppy and run them - it seems my floppy drive is not compeletely dead! Would it make any difference if I formatted floppy as 360kB on a different MSX2 that I own before transfering .dsk to disk with dcopy?

By Hans41

Expert (71)

21-01-2019, 11:31

Formatting the disk on a real MSX and in 360kb format would make the disc compatible. Any other format or formatted on a non MSX machine will likely cause issues.

Assuming you're still talking about your vg8235, it's best to format the disk in 360kb on one of your other MSX's.

Disks don't have eternal life. To be sure, maybe use / try more than one floppy.

And obviously, disk images of 360kb are the only ones you can use.

An option: connect a pc drive to the external drive connector. Then you can use 720kb floppies / images.
That drive will be a B-drive. With certain POKES, you can temporarily change the B-drive to an A-drive and even 'reboot' from the B-drive (temporarily acting as an A-drive).

By Wild_Penguin

Hero (644)

21-01-2019, 12:05

Head motor broken? Can you move the head motor shaft manually, does it rotate freely (while the thing is powered off, of course)?

(Perhaps just the track0 is enough for rearing and writing very small files and FAT?)

By Albert77

Rookie (21)

22-01-2019, 06:36

Time to get a gotek and a Double sided diskrom (I tried it in my sanyo wavy 70fd2 & nms 8250)
It works perfect