Expert II Floppy Drive Issue

[gojirien]

Hey,

My Expert II was working like a charm since I hae, but today I put Cotton in it. The floppies can not be read (no noise at all), and disks are rejected after 5 seconds.

But since then, all my games do not work anymore ; every floppy disk is rejected after 5 seconds. The red light appears but no noise of the drives working, and disks are rejected .

After reading the Floppy Drive repair section, I'll try to see if the drives work again after several minutes the X68K is powered on.

[gojirien]

Rectification: floppy 1 works fine.

Floppy 0 is faulty, step motor stops t move quickly.

[kamiboy]

Have the caps in the drives been changed? If not then that is most likely the issue. If you are having their caps refreshed you might as well future proof your machine and having all its caps changed in one go.

[gojirien]

just opened my unit, it seems floppies have not been recaped :



time to make a complete revision^^.

i can hear a little noise when disk is incerted, seems step motor seek something and stops, then disk is rejected.

i'll let you know if capkit do the job .

[gojirien]

Also I wanted to show you the floppies of cotton I received.



The 2 are like this, with "the little circle" a bit "damaged". I don't think this has to do with my floppy 0 failure.

[eidis]

 Hi Gojirien !

Your X68000 is giving you a warning that you should urgently recap the whole system. A recap is much faster and simpler than multi feature repair extravaganza.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

[gojirien]

Hey Eidis

Thanks for the advice, it fact it appears the mother and daughter boards have been recaped ; just the floppies aren't.

I was wondering (but I could check myself^^), capacitors list in expert and expert II are the same ?

[gojirien]

Damn motherboard ! Can't manage to get it off the shell

[gojirien]

So now, whole system recaped...

X68000 now powers on, but no display and floppies stay unpowered. Soft switch doesn't work too. 5 and 12v are here on the floppies but they do not light on.

I guess i have to replace the psu, i'll do it with a pico psu I think.

[kamiboy]

Hold on a tick. You mean to say that the PSU stopped working after the recap?

I smell a rat here, mate. Before looking into pico this or that better go over your work and make sure you did not introduce any unintended solder bridges,  cold solder joints or replace any caps with one of the wrong capacitance/voltage during the recap.

Cold solder joints happen quite easily.

Are you saying that the floppy drives are receiving 5 and 12v from the PSU, but do not light on? How can that be if the soft power does not work?

[gojirien]

Actually, x68000 does this :

Power Led ok, and i push the power switch the x68000 boots.

But after that i have no display, and floppies stay off (no floppies Leds Light on at all )

And if i want to soft power off, the power Led don't turn Red, and psu fan continue to turn.

The strange thing is that floppies receive the voltages, but they stay off.

[kamiboy]

That is strange indeed. But it sounds like the PSU is working partially at the very least since it can soft power on. Better look at the other components then, make sure everything is soldered right, and all cables are inserted correctly etc.

[gojirien]

Ok so i checked everything, connectors, whole recap of the system...Still the same issue.

I'm gonna replace the psu in a last attempt. Just ordered a pico psu.

Does anyone have such an adapter for sale :



They seem to be currently out of stock everywhere.

[eidis]

 Hi Gojirien !

There are few things that could be causing this:

1) it could be a faulty floppy disk cable which connects the drives to the motherboard. The original one is quite fragile and x68000 needs to have good connection to both drives in order to switch on properly. Sometimes it can make intermittent contact and you can easily test the cable by carefully twisting it near the connectors when the system is powered on. If at some point the X68000 displays something on the screen then the cable is your culprit.

2) Poorly seated riser card can cause system not to boot as well. Reseat the riser and see if it helps.

P.S. Don't butcher the PSU

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

[gojirien]

Hey Eidis,

1) Ok I'll check that. That's simple but I didn't think about this cable at all.

2) Sorry, I don't understand what is the "riser card" and the "riser"


Thanks à lot.


Post merge : ok I think you are talking about the IO board. In fact it was hard to pull off it the first time, and yes when I reconnect it it seems too easy^^.

[eidis]

 Hi Gojirien!

Riser card is a printed circuit board which allows us to use two I/O slot expansion cards and connects them to the main motherboard.

Keep the scene alive !
Eidis

[gojirien]

Hey Guys,

So I got my floppy drives replaced with spare ones.

No problem with all my games, except...Cotton !

I tried again this game this morning, and the floppy issue is back : drive 0 don't read floppies anymore.

Is it possible that the floppy A of Cotton puts dirt "for example" on the head ?

[kamiboy]

Maybe, try to look at the magnetic surface of the disk for anomalies. In any regard, there are floppy drive cleaning disks, maybe try one of those.

[gojirien]

You're right, the Cotton A disk has something looking like "iron sand"

I feel like stupid now, really^^. I'll try to clean the head, with cleaning disk and/or isopropyl alcohol.

[kamiboy]

Be careful when cleaning the head. If you apply too much pressure you might knock the head out of alignment and then you are in a heap of trouble.

[gojirien]

So, I cleaned the head with 70% alcohol very carefully.



And now my floppy is back from the dead^^.

Thanks mates !

[BlueBMW]

Excellent news!  Now get you a compact flash / SD interface setup and let those poor floppy drives rest hehe.