Re: Sidecar question (was Re: Re: Service manual or schematics of the PC20-III)

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From: hwarin@neuf.fr hwarin@neuf.fr
Reply: cbm-hackers@musoftware.de cbm-hackers@musoftware.de
Date: 2014-03-10 at 02:06:22
To: cbm-hackers@musoftware.de cbm-hackers@musoftware.de
Subject:  Sidecar question (was Re: Re: Service manual or schematics of the PC20-III)

> Hi, friends
>  
> I'm also playing those days with "more than 8 bits" commodore systems.

I’ve noticed with the “Gotek” story ;-)

> I've wake up my  
> A1000 and it's sidecar (wanted to try a newly built XT2CF board from "Lo tech /Peacon LTD"  
> and I'm facing with a quite enoying thing : My sidecar's 5 1/4 floppy drive (what operate  
> perfectly well) acts as a 720Kb drive ! With a such behaviour, I can't transfer anything  
> to/from the sidecar and the rest of the world ... Catweasel with a Teac FD55BR100U can't  
> go over track 40, XP hangs while trying to read the floppy on a regular panasonic 1.2meg  
> drive, even the M24 fails after reading track 0 (as expectable) !
>  
> So, one question comes in my mind : Sidecars (and bridgeboards) are supposed to have 5  
> 1/4 drives of 360Kb from all docs I've been able to find - How is it possible to have this  
> one working in 720K ? I've found nowhere any jumper saying anything about this (only 1  
> to 4 floppy options - no size choice).

Hm, I would need to dig up my bridge boards but I’d bet I used them with both 5.25 and 3.5. There was the Janus stuff that allowed to switch between Amiga and Bridgeboard access to the floppy (all AFAIR), which was connected through the bridge. The other drive I don’t remember exactly but I believe I used a regular PC stuff to connect it. So the Sidecar is probably different than the later bridge boards (I really used the only the 386SX although I think I have all of them). Unfortunately I have no working Sidecar. I have a few, possibly working mainboards though.


> Another question : I've tryed an A1011 from my CDTV as a secondary "PC" floppy ... It's  
> correctly accessed/selected, but, no way to use/format a 720K DD 3 1/2 floppy. The same  
> A1011, with tyhe same floppy works perfectly from the "A1000" side. Does anyone have  
> a rational idea on this second point ?

This (and the previous) question. Is there a kind of “BIOS settings” in the Sidecar that could allow you to set the floppy params? I recall all the PC stuff was a real PITA back in the days, including finding and setting correct params for every connected device so that it a) works, b) does not render other device(s) unusable.
 
> Any suggestion welcome !

I’d check if there is anything similar to BIOS params settings first.

-- 
SD!

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