Re: Help with a 8050 drive

From: Ethan Dicks (ethan.dicks_at_gmail.com)
Date: 2007-05-14 04:48:26

On 5/13/07, Mark Zablocki <personable85@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Bill,
>
> I'm using a Commodore 8032. I was told that the 8050 was designed to work with the 8032.

The 8050 will work fine with any PET except, I'm assuming, an
un-upgraded v1 ROM 2001 (due to bugs in the IEEE routines in the
original ROMs).  BASIC 4 has a number of commands that make it easier
to use diskette drives, but even a 3001/2001-16 or -32 will talk to an
8050 just fine (but you'll have to load a DOS Wedge or use a lot of
PRINT# statements).

From your description, it's not entirely clear what's up with your
drive - do you have any disks to attempt any read tests?  If you have
a problem with the write side of your analog electronics, then a
HEADER (N0:...) is not going to succeed.  If you can't read a
known-good disk, then no amount of write testing is going to reveal
your problems (unless you have another known-good 8050 next to the
first one to test how the first one writes).

Considering the 8050 is either a 96tpi or 100tpi drive (depending on
the exact brand of 5.25" mechanism installed, IIRC), it's a much
higher density than a 4040 or 1541.  Are you using suitable media?  I
can see how a format test would fail with a working drive and bad
media.

-ethan

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