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[rbudrick]

Most folks here know you must occasionally retune the head, the speed and a couple other things on your FDS every now and then, so that's kind of what this post is about.

I recently got a 7201 chip from Tomy and put it in my FDS. I then modded the power board, which is necessary for all FDS drives to make them capable to write FDS disks. When you replace your 3206 chip with a 7201 chip you have to retune the FDS head with the screw under it to get it to read again. I did this, and the my newly modded 7201 drive was working great! However two issues came up.

First, I was afraid the speed of the drive wasn't right, which would make it impossible to tune the head, if the speed was indeed wrong. So, I connected my RAM adapter with a TGD6 to FDSLoadr and loaded COpy Master up. Once it loaded, I reconnected the RAM adaper to the FDS Drive. It then allowed me to successfully tune the drive speed, which I set to 5 without having to tune the head first. Then, I successfully tuned the head to read disks again. Now, here's the weird thing: After the head was tuned right, I had to set the speed again! It went down from 5 to 2. Can anyone explain this?

Now for the second problem. This now practically like-new drive will not work wih FDSLoadr to dump disks. When you put a disk in, it just spins forever, and never dumps a single block. Can anyone explain that? Does your modded drive work fine with FDSLoader?

Oh wait, there is a third issue. My 3206 drive and my 7201 drive are both tuned to speed 5, yet I swear my 7201 drive is much slower at loading anything. Can anyone explain this?

Oh, I just thought of another question. Tomy, you mentioned that when you tune a drive to speed 5 (disk in), the drive speed will be 0 with the disk out. My 7201 drive shows a speed of 2 when the disk is out, though it displays 5 when the disk is in. Is this normal?

In other news I think I figured out a semi-good way to tune the fds head. That screw under the head *I think* slides the two pieces of metal together that the screw and the head sits on. Maybe some kind of caliper could measure the distance. I'm sure there's a small leeway, but it'd be cool to find the range.

Well, I hope you can help.

-Rob

[ChimyFolkButter]

Rob,

I always tune my speed all the way down and then tune the speed up. My disk is running at 2. When you adjust the head, be real careful! You don't want to strip the screw. I already messed up one.

[rbudrick]

Well, folks, I think I discovered something. Kyuusaku, you might be interested in this because you've had trouble getting FDSLoadr to work.

I retuned my 3206 drive too. I got it working with many disks I swore were dead. Both my FDSs are now practically like new! However, now NEITHER one works with FDSLoadr. I tested whether it's a drive speed issue, and it's not. It's a head adjustment thing. So, it appears FDSLoadr doesn't like perfectly working heads. They have to be somewhat imperfectly tuned. So, I suggest that anyone who uses FDSLoadr have two drives...one tuned to perfectly read all disks for playing and one perfectly tuned for FDSLoadr

Does anyone think maybe a circuit can be built into the cable to adjust for whatever discrepancy this causes. Better yet, does anyone know exactly why FDSLoadr won't work now? I imagine its some kind of timing issue, but it would be cool to know where in the source code this is adjusted, if possible. That way, I wouldn't have to retunr the damn drive every time I want to use it for one thing or the other.

This reminds me...in the Famicom Kaizou Manual article I translated that some of you may have seen, it had instructions for building and using FDS dubbing cables. You build the cable and there's a little potentiometer you turn to get the FDS to sync (two LEDs light up when you hit the right spot). Maybe it's the same type of problem I'm having.

-Rob

[madman]

The mysteries never end with FDS drives...

[ChimyFolkButter]

Rob, I want to follow your thought process here. You write a disk with the FDSLoader tuned drive. You read the disk with the Tuned FDS drive. Does that work? If it does, I am truly amazed at the mystery of FDS.

-CFB

[madman]

Are you talking about reading or writing? I can maybe see why reading wouldn't work with a drive tuned within a certain threshold due to timing issues. But, if writing works, it should work. Even if you had a completely mis-aligned drive, if you wrote a disk with that drive, that drive (and most likely only that drive) should be able to load the disk. Odd stuff.

[rbudrick]