Tried to format some disks (old and brand-new HD and DD disks), both drives refuse to format (step motor bangs 5-6 times, but ends with messages about drive not ready or write protected, no progress at all with the format bar of the GEM window). All exec files return with TOS Error #35, but I can read the contents of some non-exec files in ASCII form.
I can open the disk directory, but ALL the folder names and filenames are corrupt (e.g. So what's the problem, I hear you say.īoth drives do not boot as expected, they just seem to read the disks for a couple of seconds, the machines turns to GEM afterwards. Had a couple of spare 1.44 floppy drives (Samsung SFD 321B and Mitsumi D359M3D) and made the modifications required for use with the ST and followed carefully the instructions of reversing the ribbon cable etc. so now, the drive is dead and unusable, beyond any repair! Opened it up and realized that the little ribbon that connects the upper head to the drive's main PCB was kind of cut, trying to fix it made it worse. I first managed to load a couple of Automation game disks that I wrote to real floppies using my PC and STDISK utility, but loading was not always successful.
I recently acquired a 520STE, came to me working (with a little picture distortion on RF), but with an almost dead floppy drive! The drive is Newtronics (Mitsumi) D357T. Relatively noob with the ST range here, but very old and experienced with retrocomputing, in general.
