D10D3
New Member
Hey guys, long time listener, first time caller.
I've been working on a Tandy 1000EX and I've run into some trouble with the floppy drive. When I first got my Tandy the drive seemed to work just fine and it had no trouble booting from disks, but after a week or so the drive stopped recognizing any disk. When I attempt to access the drive it will spin the disk, but the read head doesn't seek, and after a few moments it reports a failure to read the disk.
Here is what I've tried so far:
I tried a number of different disks.
I dismantled the drive and cleaned the heads.
I built adapter cables to allow me to use non-Tandy drives and tried several, both 5.25" 320k drives and 3.5" drives with 720k disks. These all acted in the same manner as the first.
I installed a riser card in the expansion bay with an XTCF board to allow me to boot the machine without the drive and confirmed that it seems to function in all other ways.
Theories:
As much as I don't want it to be the case, I'm starting to think there could be a problem with the FD Controller on the motherboard. I dismantled the whole machine and cleaned the motherboard and I don't see any bulging capacitors or other obvious problems, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'm not sure where to go from here or how to diagnose it further and would appreciate any advice.
I've been working on a Tandy 1000EX and I've run into some trouble with the floppy drive. When I first got my Tandy the drive seemed to work just fine and it had no trouble booting from disks, but after a week or so the drive stopped recognizing any disk. When I attempt to access the drive it will spin the disk, but the read head doesn't seek, and after a few moments it reports a failure to read the disk.
Here is what I've tried so far:
I tried a number of different disks.
I dismantled the drive and cleaned the heads.
I built adapter cables to allow me to use non-Tandy drives and tried several, both 5.25" 320k drives and 3.5" drives with 720k disks. These all acted in the same manner as the first.
I installed a riser card in the expansion bay with an XTCF board to allow me to boot the machine without the drive and confirmed that it seems to function in all other ways.
Theories:
As much as I don't want it to be the case, I'm starting to think there could be a problem with the FD Controller on the motherboard. I dismantled the whole machine and cleaned the motherboard and I don't see any bulging capacitors or other obvious problems, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'm not sure where to go from here or how to diagnose it further and would appreciate any advice.