VOGONS


First post, by StriderTR

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My DOS 6.22 build has been giving me a few troubles lately, and while I have most of them corrected, a new one popped up.

I decided to run Memtest on it, even though the reason for the test is no longer valid, I still wanted to see the results. During the process of creating the boot disk, DOS was reporting that my GoTek was in "write protect"mode, even though I'm sure it's not. So, thinking it may be a hardware issue with the GoTek or between it and my Asus TX-97, I hooked up my Alps DF354H 3.5 floppy drive, and again, even though the disks are indeed NOT write protected, DOS reports them as protected. As a last ditch effort, I swapped in the new FDD cable I just bought so I could hook up both my GoTek and Alps at the same time, but it had no effect.

I enabled and disabled Floppy Mode 3, shouldn't be related, but I tried it anyway. Floppy in BIOS is set to R/W. To verify, disks are all writable on my Sony 2X USB floppy drive, and the sliders are indeed in the closed position, so it's not the disks themselves.

No matter what disk I use, or drive, DOS keeps telling me it's write protected. I must be forgetting something, it has been a very long time. Any ideas?

If it was just the Alps drive, I would suspect a simple hardware fault on the FDD, and would just pop it open and jump the switch to permanently disable write protect, but the GoTek has no such thing. Of course, it could just be a coincidence and both my GoTek and Alps have the same issue, and I will still probably open the Alps and test the switch just to make sure, but before I do that I wanted to see if there was anything I may be missing.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

DOS, Win9x, General "Retro" Enthusiast. Professional Tinkerer. Technology Hobbyist. Expert at Nothing! Build, Create, Repair, Repeat!
This Old Man's Builds, Projects, and Other Retro Goodness: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/

Reply 1 of 4, by jmarsh

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So you've tried different drives and a different cable... how about a different controller?

Reply 2 of 4, by StriderTR

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jmarsh wrote on 2024-08-21, 17:17:

So you've tried different drives and a different cable... how about a different controller?

I've tried the only two drives I have, the GoTek floppy emulator and the "real" Alps floppy drive. Yes, the only 2 cables I have as well. One is a single drive cable, the other is a new two drive cable.

Sadly, I don't have any other hardware on-hand with an FDD controller, just the Asus TX97-XE in the system.

DOS, Win9x, General "Retro" Enthusiast. Professional Tinkerer. Technology Hobbyist. Expert at Nothing! Build, Create, Repair, Repeat!
This Old Man's Builds, Projects, and Other Retro Goodness: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/

Reply 3 of 4, by jmarsh

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Then I would be tracing the WPT signal on the FDD connector header to see if anything looks amiss.

Reply 4 of 4, by StriderTR

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jmarsh wrote on 2024-08-22, 02:50:

Then I would be tracing the WPT signal on the FDD connector header to see if anything looks amiss.

That's not a bad idea, I really didn't even consider trying that since I've never had any issues like this before that wasn't the fault of the floppy drive itself or the drives being set to read only on the BIOS.

I'll probe pin 28 on it tomorrow and see what I see. If all else fails, like I said, I'll check the switch in the Alps drive just to eliminate the possible coincidence both drives have an issue.

DOS, Win9x, General "Retro" Enthusiast. Professional Tinkerer. Technology Hobbyist. Expert at Nothing! Build, Create, Repair, Repeat!
This Old Man's Builds, Projects, and Other Retro Goodness: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/