Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    Sorry , I know the layout from the document, but the french translation
    of the user guide is a little bit funny.
    we have some  unknow signal on the AMIGA connector and we c'nt do
    the relation with a shugart connector 

    See note 307...  It looks like it has complete details to hook up
    a 5 1/4" drive.
    
    John
    

    Hello John,
    
    many thanks for your answer.
    
    Michel

    
    
    I have tried the scheme in note 307 with a RX50 floppy.
    The hardware seems correct, but the RX50 is always reconized by
    Amiga as a 3'1/2 floppy (DF2:)
    How to tell to Amiga it 's a 5'1/4 ??
    Have I to modify the MOUNTLIST?
    
    Francis (who has Unfortunatly ONE floppy).
    

The Amiga doesn't care what size the disk is, but the mountlist should contain
information about how many cylinders, etc the drive handles.  Not all 5-1/4"
drives can read 80 cylinders, (IBM-pc drives typically are 40 cylinders)

Look in the AmigaDOS book for more info on the mountlist, or I could probably
find a valid mountlist, if I had too...

Robb

Re: .5

I think the sample mount list that comes on the Workbench disk contains
an entry for a sample 5.25 inch floppy.

Look in the devs directory.

    I used to run a third home-brew drive along with the internal and
    external 3-1/2" drives on my 1000.  The following Mountlist worked
    for me.  I had to configure a device select jumper on the 5-1/4"
    drive so that, I believe, it identified itself as unit 3.  As far
    as I know, you can use any device name you want in the Mountlist
    (e.g. I used to use it as "DH0:" when certain pinhead software required
    it).  AmigaDOS seemed to try to autoconfigure the drive as "DF3:"
    on power up, with 80 tracks, which didn't work too well, so I used
    the next logical device name, "DF4:".  Hope this helps...
--------------------------------cut here--------------------------------------    
DF4:       Device = trackdisk.device
           Unit   = 3
           Flags  = 1
           Surfaces  = 2
           BlocksPerTrack = 11
           Reserved = 2
           Interleave = 0
           LowCyl = 0  ;  HighCyl = 39
           Buffers = 5
           BufMemType = 3
#
--------------------------------cut here--------------------------------------    
    

    
    Hello everybody,
    
    	First Thanks for your answers..
    	To go through my problem, I am always in trouble
    	I have tried different configurations when modifying the mount
    	list- I think the sample in the Workbench is to connect the
    	A1020 floppy (which is not sold in France at the moment)
    
    	1- I changed the unit # and the Highcyl # as described in Re.7
    	same pb..
    	2- I changed the surface #(from 2 to 1) same pb..
     	
    	At power-up, I see all the time the icon DF2:bad. I can't format
    	it (Format failed - Bad sector header).
    
    	BTW, I have no trace of the Trackdisk.device, neither on Workbench
    	no Extras.
    	As my AmigaDos book (French traduction) is very poor, I can't
    	get any information about this driver...
    	
    	Any help will be always welcome!!
    
    Francis.

    RE: 8
    
    Forget DF2:.  This is AmigaDOS' attempt to autoconfigure the extra
    drive as an 80-track device.
    
    Leave the surface number at 2.  If you use the entry in .7, after
    boot-up, issue "Mount DF4:" from a CLI.  This should give you access
    to the drive as a 40-track device, whose device name is "DF4:".
    
    I think there's a way (through wiring) to stop the O.S. from trying
    to autoconfigure the drive as "DF2:", however, I would just ignore
    it and put up with the extra "DF2:BAD" icon.
    
    Also, I don't believe the trackdisk.device is on the Workbench disk
    anywhere; I think it's written into the Kickstart code, not sure.
    If your existing drive(s) are working, it's there someplace!!

>RE:.-1
> Also, I don't believe the trackdisk.device is on the Workbench disk
> anywhere; I think it's written into the Kickstart code, not sure.
> If your existing drive(s) are working, it's there someplace!!

	Correct.
	No matter where it is, it's there because you can access it,
	even from Basic. But you can't see it.
Iv.

Re: .?, .9, .10

The trackdisk.device is in Kickstart.  I wouldn't actually say it is
hidden, since you can access it through the operating system approved
method (OpenDevice).

The Amiga's operating system is written in such a way that it doesn't
matter where parts of it live.  Parts of it are in ROM; parts of it
are on the disk.  Whenever you access a part of the operating system
using the approved methods (OpenDevice for devices, OpenLibrary for
libraries), the system figures out where the needed component is.

In future versions of the operating system, ROM resident parts may
become disk resident, and disk resident parts may become ROM resident.
Since this is transparent, Commodore is free to do whatever makes
the most sense.

    
    	That seemms very interesting but....
    	I can't still never use my RX50 connected to the external floppy
    	connector of my Amiga.
    	So I have 2 more questions:
    	1-Has anybody really plugged an RX50 floppy back to the Amiga??
    	2-Is the "FORMAT" program at CLI prompt support the 5'1/4 floppies?
    
    	NB: The RX50 works fine under VMS...
    

Format works on the 5-1/4"  (how else could you use a 5-1/4"??)

Format is also a good test of the media/hardware since every track has to
be formatted. The only problem I encountered hooking up a 5-1/4 was that
the format command died shortly after the disk started spinning (was a 
missing connection) What symptoms does your machine have when you try to
format the 5-1/4" ??

Robb

Rumour has it that you can even format the RAM: disk in WB 1.3

    
    When I try to format the RX50 floppy,the program stops at track 2
    and then the message "Bad header " appears.
    So I open the cover of the RX50 to see if the head moves.
    Each time I try a command Format,the head move one step and stops,
    and I get the error message.
    When I try an another Format command,the next step of the head starts
    at the place where the head was.
    As I can see, the head never goes back to Track 0.
    
    
    
    

I'm not real familiar with floppies, but it sounds like an interface signal
is missing, or the controller is not stepping the RX50 properly (heads
move, but not far enough and it can't reverse direvtion)

John
    
    
    

    Maybe there is a timeout in the device driver, and the RX50 isn't
    moving its head fast enough.
        John Sauter

.14 says "Bad Header" which is a data error. If it were a timeout
waiting for a seek i'd expect something to the effect of
"seek not complete" error.

Also, what kind of media are you using? RX50 *requires* RX50 media!

John