The Sinclair QL Forum

I think we can narrow down the problem to one (or more?) of the following:
1) Power supply problem
2) cable problem
3) Disk drives both faulty
4) Gold Card faulty

So I've ordered a USB to floppy drive connector to try the QL drives out and see if they spin up.

I'll update when I get it (in a week or so...)

Sebright wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 3:26 pm I have an old PC with a floppy drive. I swapped out flp1 for that but it didn’t even light up. Quite a few reasons why that might not work though. But if there was a way to try one of the QL drives in the PC that might get me a bit further forward.

Does the PC floppy drive work OK in the PC? So at least you know that floppy drive and the PC works.

I would expect the QL floppy to work in a PC, but you might have to try it in both of the floppy drive connectors on the cable (the cable usually has two connectors on one end, with a twist in the cable). And it may appear as drive B:

Unless you can change the drive select jumpers on the QL floppys.

I wonder if it's old electrolytic cap problems on the drive PCBs, they can go bad with age and that may well result in it not spinning (and other potential faults).

Martin_Head wrote: Wed Apr 23, 2025 10:08 am

Sebright wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 3:26 pm I have an old PC with a floppy drive. I swapped out flp1 for that but it didn’t even light up. Quite a few reasons why that might not work though. But if there was a way to try one of the QL drives in the PC that might get me a bit further forward.

Does the PC floppy drive work OK in the PC? So at least you know that floppy drive and the PC works.

I would expect the QL floppy to work in a PC, but you might have to try it in both of the floppy drive connectors on the cable (the cable usually has two connectors on one end, with a twist in the cable). And it may appear as drive B:

Unless you can change the drive select jumpers on the QL floppys.

I tried to install one of the drives in the PC but the connector in the PC had some of the holes blanked off so I would have had to remove some pins from the QL drive. I wasn’t ready to try that yet.

Edit: and yes, that PC drive has been working recently, though the PC itself is on its last legs. Keeps overheating.

If I remember correctly. If you put a PC floppy drive in a QL, it becomes FLP2_. You have to change the drive select on the drive, to make it work as FLP1_

worth reseating the DP8473 and checking the crystal is still ok on the gold card.

Martin_Head wrote: Wed Apr 23, 2025 5:23 pm If I remember correctly. If you put a PC floppy drive in a QL, it becomes FLP2_. You have to change the drive select on the drive, to make it work as FLP1_

Thanks Martin, that worked! When I put the pc drive in before , I replaced flp1 and left flp2 connected. This time, I removed the old drives completely and the pc drive spun up as flp2. So both the originals are non-functional, possibly due to capacitor problems, as Chr$ suggested.

I'm happy with just one functional drive

Thanks to all for chipping in with suggestions.

Alan

Hi,

PC Floppy drives are all configured as Drive 1, with DS1 hard wired or the jumper in DS1 position and will be seen as FLP2_ on a QL.

To use this type of floppy drive as FLP1_ move the Jumper to DS0 or if a hardwired solder link is fitted to DS1, get a PC floppy drive cable and straighten out the twist and twist lines 10,11,12 this will select DS0

This has been discussed in a previous Forum message, just needs a search.

If you are strugginging, I can provide a suitable floppy disk cable.

Derek_Stewart wrote: Thu Apr 24, 2025 10:31 am Hi,

PC Floppy drives are all configured as Drive 1, with DS1 hard wired or the jumper in DS1 position and will be seen as FLP2_ on a QL.

To use this type of floppy drive as FLP1_ move the Jumper to DS0 or if a hardwired solder link is fitted to DS1, get a PC floppy drive cable and straighten out the twist and twist lines 10,11,12 this will select DS0

This has been discussed in a previous Forum message, just needs a search.

If you are strugginging, I can provide a suitable floppy disk cable.

Thanks for the offer Derek. The info for this drive says there are jumpers on the circuit board so I can sort that out at some point. However, I find it no hardship to type flp2 instead of flp1 for the time being.

Cheers,
Alan

Something of an update, for what it's worth...

I ordered a sealed box of "new" HD disks (probably from sometime in the early '90s by the look of the packaging). I tried formatting them with the "good" FDD from my XP PC, and they all gave up with "format failed". I was on the point of giving up and investing in a Gotek-type floppy emulator, when the postie arrived with a "new" 3.5" floppy drive that I'd ordered.

I swapped that out and hey presto, all the disks formatted. Yay!

Next, I attached a USB-floppy interface thingy that I got from ebay to the new drive, and tried to copy some files over from my Windows 10 PC using QEmulator. It was successful for smaller files, so I got QStar running on my old QL Loving having some great new software running on the old dog. But attempts to copy bigger files were unsuccessful. Thoughts of the Gotek option came back to the fore.

But then I thought about bunging the new drive back into the old XP computer. Well, that worked a treat, and I was able to copy over the whole of the QDOS version of my Finding Evan game onto a single disk, with a few sectors to spare (phew). Then, after swapping my one working drive back to the QL, we were in business.

Sorry, that was a long story, but with a happy ending. I've ordered another of the same drives, so that I won't be constantly swapping them over in future. But would it be worth adding one of those Gotek-type drives as a 2nd drive? Are they hard to set up?

Cheers,
Alan