The Sinclair QL Forum

My QL renovation hasn't progressed very far, although it boots up at least.

It's a JM with Gold Card and dual 3.5" drives. It was working when I put it in the basement about 25 years ago.

When I try to dir flp1_ (or dir flp2_) I get "not found" whether I have a disk in or not. The appropriate drive lights up at the appropriate time but there is no sign of the drive motors turning. Flp1_ has a power connector with two of the wires connected, and that shows 5V with my multimeter.

Could it be that both drive motors have seized, or maybe the floppy interface has failed? I think I would give up if the latter were the case. There is no obvious sign that the Gold Card isn't working apart from that. I can enable TK2, and PRINT FREE_MEM gives 1.87392E6 as the result.

Any idea?
Cheers,
Alan

first try to find why your fdd's are not spinning .

Sebright wrote: Tue Apr 22, 2025 1:19 pm When I try to dir flp1_ (or dir flp2_) I get "not found" whether I have a disk in or not. The appropriate drive lights up at the appropriate time but there is no sign of the drive motors turning. Flp1_ has a power connector with two of the wires connected, and that shows 5V with my multimeter.

5V isn't enough for old floppy drives (only relatively new ones live on 5Volts only). There must be a separate 12V power rail somewhere that powers the motors. That maybe got ripped at some point?

Thanks for the suggestions. Here's some more info...

The power supply runs to the case for flp2_, and there is no 12V line that I can see.

I bodged a spur off this to power flp1_ and sellotaped the two drives together to make a dual unit.

I have taken it apart and taken photos to show the relevant bits below. I'm sure I haven't taken anything away from the setup since mothballing it.

From the NEC 1037 Datasheet

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.

Interesting. The data sheet for the NEC drive says it wants 12Volts

try the 5vols mitsubishi only as drive 1 that should spin at startup when there is a floppy inserted

It’s a wonder those drives ever worked at all! So maybe all I need is a new power supply giving 12v to persuade the motors to get going?

That FLP2 is clearly marked as 5v version both on the case and PCB