exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Oddly these kits seem to have started selling again a lot lately.. I struggle to put the last few I currently have stock and have basically ran out of PCB's now. So I have designed the next revision..

Mostly this one corrects the header spacing issues which have plagued the previous version.

I have also added on a SIL array on the WD1772 databus as the DMA suffers from this a little and can cause odd hard drive or floppy drive faults without it.

This one I have used a SMT 16MHz oscillator. Previous versions the oscillator was just physically too big to fit on the PCB, (dip 8 type) so it has been left off design for a long time. But now oscillators are a lot cheaper and smaller, I thought it better just to add one onto the PCB to save having to run a wire to the shifter.

The board still includes the media change fix as a optional jumper setting and all the usual automatic 8/16Mhz switching etc.

I will post news here, I should be ready to get a few prototypes made shortly, and once these are tested and working fine, I will likely get some made up kits done my store. I may sell kits of this new design, currently not sure, may just sell the assembled versions as a not exactly in huge demand anyway.

Test PCBs came last week.. So built up today and now under testing


EDIT:

I've got 2 spare of these PCB's.. If anyone want one, £12 each plus postage (will include the GAL with the PCB only).

New super sexy PCBs arrived today pictures do not do them justice.
Now to find some time to actually build one up...

Looks good, who are you using for PCB's this time?

Forgottenmyname wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:45 pm Looks good, who are you using for PCB's this time?

I use the guy I normally use for quality stuff http://www.jetek-pcb.com/ Only ever had quality service & products from them. Been using them 10+ years.

Nice boards, look very good.

Also good to see the header spacing issue is resolved, and the other things like the on board oscillator, nice work

I must confess that with Goteks so easily available, and the great firmware that can be used with them (FlashFloppy, HxC), I find it a little strange that people want to go to a 1.44Mb real floppy drive, but everyone has their own preferences and it's good that you have options for people who want to retain a real floppy.

Keep up the good work

rubber_jonnie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:09 pm I must confess that with Goteks so easily available, and the great firmware that can be used with them (FlashFloppy, HxC), I find it a little strange that people want to go to a 1.44Mb real floppy drive, but everyone has their own preferences and it's good that you have options for people who want to retain a real floppy.

All my main STs have real floppies - and 1.44MB ones at that I sometimes archive old disk collections and don't want to hunt around for solutions if some of those disks happen to be HD.

rubber_jonnie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:09 pm Nice boards, look very good.

rubber_jonnie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:09 pm Also good to see the header spacing issue is resolved, and the other things like the on board oscillator, nice work

Yeah, tried not to balls anything up this time

rubber_jonnie wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:09 pm I must confess that with Goteks so easily available, and the great firmware that can be used with them (FlashFloppy, HxC), I find it a little strange that people want to go to a 1.44Mb real floppy drive, but everyone has their own preferences and it's good that you have options for people who want to retain a real floppy.

Yeah, but its a small kit and helps people do something relatively simple for a upgrade. With 720K's failing some may think its makes sense to use a 1.44 kit if they end up using a 1.44 drive anyway. I don't really know why the kits became popular all of a sudden. Hardly any sold past couple of years and I wasn't going to produce them again.

I find the floppy drive a invaluable diagnostic tool. If it takes a long "pause" between "chugs" of reading tracks, I know something is wrong.. Also read failures know the sound.. if it goes GRRRRRRRRRRR really loud then chances are something is screwed up badly. Failing to format also gives odd problems... all doing booster work.. its great for testing out DMA stuff with a audible sound of how the drive is operating. Floppy drive is a better diagnostic tool than the diagnostic cartridge

exxos wrote: ↑Wed Jul 25, 2018 8:52 am Yeah, tried not to balls anything up this time

Yeah, but its a small kit and helps people do something relatively simple for a upgrade. With 720K's failing some may think its makes sense to use a 1.44 kit if they end up using a 1.44 drive anyway. I don't really know why the kits became popular all of a sudden. Hardly any sold past couple of years and I wasn't going to produce them again.

When I installed mine, it was because I knew of no other option, so I do wonder if some of it is simply that there are new people coming into the ST world who aren't aware of Gotek.

I think it's possibly also a case of people may have physical disks that are failing, and a ton of actual floppies that they still want to use/recover, so going 1.44Mb floppy perhaps is a better option in lieu of getting a replacement 720Kb drive.

Also, with the prevalence of non floppy PC's these days, using FloImg to create images is becoming more difficult, especially since as a rule USB floppies don't work with it. I'm lucky enough to have an old Dell laptop that runs Windows 2000 Pro, and has a real floppy drive, so image creation is a breeze.

I do get why folks want them (I may even get another from you yet!!), but for my own specific set of circumstances, with the tools to create images if I need, and a library of images to hand, Gotek makes much more sense.

I find the floppy drive a invaluable diagnostic tool. If it takes a long "pause" between "chugs" of reading tracks, I know something is wrong.. Also read failures know the sound.. if it goes GRRRRRRRRRRR really loud then chances are something is screwed up badly. Failing to format also gives odd problems... all doing booster work.. its great for testing out DMA stuff with a audible sound of how the drive is operating. Floppy drive is a better diagnostic tool than the diagnostic cartridge

Yeah, I completely agree that there is no substitute for a real drive for diags. I had to use a real drive earlier in the week for testing the ATonce, because I needed to be sure the real DOS boot disk I had would work, before I then migrated to images on the Gotek. Of course I'll put my results up on here for everybody to use though

Out of all my STs, only one still has a real floppy drive, and that's an ancient 1040 STF with a big button floppy, and I really don't have the heart to rip it out and mod the case for Gotek. It's not been an issue for the others, since they are either Frankenstein machines whose case is not original, or came to me already modded.

After several months the new version 7 (blue boards) are finally now in stock.


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