• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

few quick question on Commodore Colt

oblivion

oblivion

Veteran Member
Joined
Aug 28, 2010
Messages
1,003
Location
Apache Junction, AZ
was looking into a commodore colt machine but I have a few questions.

1) hows the built in CGA on the machine? should one bother adding a say ATI CGA card?

2) is the floppy controller built into this machines motherboard? can it be disabled

3) I've seen a few different motherboards and information doesn't seem to be completely clear. does the colt have an IDE controller built in?
 
1) It's dual-mode Hercules and Plantronics ColorPlus compatible. (320x200x16 and 640x200x4 modes, incompatible with, for instance, Tandy/PCjr extended modes.)

2) yes, dunno about the disabling part.

3) Pretty sure it has one of those "XT-IDE" controllers that work with maybe a half-dozen drives, not really particularly useful.
 
got the colt. looks like Ive hit the same roadblock everyone else has. would love to get a 720kb floppy drive running but I cant seem to. I don't even mind if its set as the B drive. I replaced the floppy cable with one with a twist but still nothing. drive A will work but when I attempt to access drive B if fails, if I try again it makes drive A drive B and accesses it....bizarre.
 
oblivion said:
1) hows the built in CGA on the machine? should one bother adding a say ATI CGA card?
Click to expand...

I'm quite sure they actually used an ATi chip, the one from the Small Wonder. I have a PC20-III and an ATi Small Wonder card in another PC, and the chip and overall layout look exactly the same.
It's a single-chip solution, and I don't know of any other single-chip CGA/Plantronics-compatible solution... It even has the same quirky NTSC colour output. So I'm 99% sure it's the ATi.

Some sources report it has 32KB, others report it has 64KB, I'm not sure which is true... since I haven't found any software that uses the specific features, it doesn't matter much.
 
oblivion said:
got the colt. looks like Ive hit the same roadblock everyone else has. would love to get a 720kb floppy drive running but I cant seem to. I don't even mind if its set as the B drive. I replaced the floppy cable with one with a twist but still nothing. drive A will work but when I attempt to access drive B if fails, if I try again it makes drive A drive B and accesses it....bizarre.
Click to expand...

I tried that too, couldn't make it work.
The controller is actually based on the Amiga. Commodore used to sell drive kits for 3.5" drives, so it should be possible to make it work with the right drive.
The kits are:
PC 910 Single 3.5" 360K/720K, Internal for PC10/20-I-II-III.
PC 915 Single 3.5" 1.44M, internal for PC10/20-I,II,III, PC30-III EC
PC 920 Single 5.25" 360K/1.2M, Internal for PC10/20-I-II-III.
But I've tried various 3.5" drives I had lying around, including some Amiga ones, and I could get none of them working. It seems it does not use standard signaling for the motor, so the drives did not spin up when a read command was sent. The led came on, but nothing happened.

I've heard from people here (I think it was SkydivinGirl) that a Gotek virtual drive works.

Oh by the way, the mouse port is also Amiga-based. I have some Amigas myself, and I actually used an Amiga mouse (model 1352, don't confuse it with the 1351, which looks the same and has the same 9-pin joystick connector, but is meant for C64 and Geos) successfully on my PC10-III in the past. It came with a standard Microsoft mouse driver, so it was fully compatible.

Oh, and why all this talk of PC10-III/PC20-III?
As you might know, the Colt is a rebranded PC10-III, so same motherboard.
The PC20-III is also the same machine (the motherboard in mine actually says PC10-III), but came with a 20 MB HDD as standard (a WD XT-IDE drive).
I have successfully installed a 40 MB ST351A/X in my PC10-III back in the day.
 
Last edited:
I have a feeling the drive situation has to do with those jumpers that designate between A: and B: as well. since any other 3.5" lacks these jumpers the colt has no idea what to do with it.

*sigh* oh well.
 
Scali said:
I'm quite sure they actually used an ATi chip, the one from the Small Wonder. I have a PC20-III and an ATi Small Wonder card in another PC, and the chip and overall layout look exactly the same.
It's a single-chip solution, and I don't know of any other single-chip CGA/Plantronics-compatible solution... It even has the same quirky NTSC colour output. So I'm 99% sure it's the ATi.

Some sources report it has 32KB, others report it has 64KB, I'm not sure which is true... since I haven't found any software that uses the specific features, it doesn't matter much.
Click to expand...

The chip on the motherboard is labled as a Paradise system inc. I think thats the graphics chip.
 
oblivion said:
I have a feeling the drive situation has to do with those jumpers that designate between A: and B: as well. since any other 3.5" lacks these jumpers the colt has no idea what to do with it.

*sigh* oh well.
Click to expand...

Hi do your drives have jumpers? On my Amiga the external cumana drives have jumpers on the drives circuit board.
I have a TIB drive on my C64 that uses the same drive as in the cumana drive and jumpers are set different to my Amiga 2000
 
oblivion said:
The chip on the motherboard is labled as a Paradise system inc. I think thats the graphics chip.
Click to expand...

Could be, but it looks like an ATi card. Perhaps Paradise made the actual chips.
If you look at the CGA card Paradise offered itself: http://www.thecomputerarchive.com/a...s/Western Digital Paradise graphics cards.PDF
That is surely not the one Commodore used, as theirs is a single-chip solution.
The circuitry on my motherboard looks exactly like this card:
http://old.vgamuseum.info/images/zaatharen/ati/ati_smallwonder_fhq.jpg
One graphics chip, two memory chips, some simple logic for the RGB and composite output, and the 4 dipswitches. As if they copy-pasted the card onto the motherboard.
 
oblivion said:
I have a feeling the drive situation has to do with those jumpers that designate between A: and B: as well. since any other 3.5" lacks these jumpers the colt has no idea what to do with it.
Click to expand...

Nah, I tried drives with jumpers, also tried cables with and without twist, and I've tried to configure it for a single drive.
Nothing worked.
 
well, I grabbed a Chinon fz-354 3 1/2 drive off ebay. Nestor in one of your previous threads said his PC-10-II came with one and it worked. it does have the jumpers on the back. i'll let you know if it works
 
well, I give up. i cant seem to figure out why commodore went with such a setup for there pc compatible floppy drives. I got the Chinon fz-354 and by setting jumpers and using a cable without a twist I was able to at least get the system to see both drives. but I still run into the issue of the 3 1/2 drive not reading. I can set it as B: drive and boot ms dos from the 5 1/4 drive just fine. when I switch over to drive b: and access the disk it reads for about a second and you can hear it starting then it goes dead silent, the light on the drive stays on for another good 10-15 seconds and then I get a "abort,retry,fail error".

this is just to much hassle for something that should be so simple. what annoys me is I know it can be done with a none "emulator" floppy but I cant figure out how.
 
It is odd that everyone is having trouble with 720K drives. The Gotek 720K drive, which I have working in mine, should be wired like a standard 720K drive. I'm using a straight, short, floppy drive cable. I don't think I have any actual 720K drives but I'm happy to take a look at my jumper settings to see what I set them to if you like.

Heather
 
if you wouldn't mind. I don't understand it myself. ideally I want the 360k drive as drive A: and a 720k drive as drive B:

I'm tempted to just get a emulator drive but for me it kind of ruins the entire look of the machine. form over function I guess.
 
SkydivinGirl said:
It is odd that everyone is having trouble with 720K drives. The Gotek 720K drive, which I have working in mine, should be wired like a standard 720K drive. I'm using a straight, short, floppy drive cable. I don't think I have any actual 720K drives but I'm happy to take a look at my jumper settings to see what I set them to if you like.
Click to expand...

The problem seems to be the motor control. I think the cabling and/or signaling is non-standard.
The drive gets detected, the led comes on when you access it, but the motor doesn't spin up.
The GoTek doesn't have an actual motor, so it may not be bothered by that, and just spits its data out on command.
 
that makes sense....so its not actually the drives that are the problem its the cables maybe?

could someone in theory take the original cable that came with the machine and remove the 5 1/4 drive connector and splice in a 3 1/2 one. or look and see how its wired up and make a cable with a 5 1/4 and a 3 1/2 connector? like you i've seen images of these things with 3 1/2 drives and Nester in one of your prvious threads on the subject said he bought his with a Chinon fz-354 and it seemed to work so someone at some point made the correct cables it seems.
 
I used a 5.25"-to-3.5" connector with the original cable, that didn't make a difference.
Perhaps if we can find the pinout for the Commodore connector and compare it to generic floppy connectors, we can spot a difference.
And perhaps the Chinons have some jumpers to take certain signals from a different pin, or respond differently to signals or whatever.
All I know is that one of the Amiga drives I tried was a Chinon (not sure if it was an FZ-354), and it was jumpered for Amiga, which also is somewhat nonstandard... but it still had the same issue.
 
Maybe Commodore followed the Amiga standard for the floppy drives on their PCs? The Amiga floppy cable has a twist, but it's in a different place than on regular PC floppy cables.
 
5.25"-to-3.5" connector

these exist? where did you pick one up?

jumpers on the FZ-354 are

3345678
1125678

11 = DS1
12 = DS0
33 = DS2
34 = DS3
55 = MM
66 = DC
77 = RDY
88 = TTL

I don't know what MM, DC, RDY or TTL mean though
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top