• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Apple IIe boots with Drive 1, will not when Drive 2 added to IO controller card

S

Stargeek

New Member
Joined
Feb 12, 2013
Messages
9
Hello all! So glad I found you.

I inherited an Apple IIe from my Father. With the information and troubleshooting guidance from this forum I was able to resolve some issues with this machine. I still have an issue and perhaps this background info will help.

With both drives hooked up to the IO controller, the power led dims and flickers.
Removed all drives and peripherals, boots to Apple ][ display.
Ran onboard diagnostics (again using info from this forum!) resulting in KERNEL OK.
Added Drive 1 to the IO controller, boots fine! Loaded Appleworks and viewed one of my Father's Navy stories.
Added Drive 2 to the IO controller, the power led dims and flickers.

Thought I could do another test involving swapping Drive 2 out for Drive 1 and see if same result. I'm assuming the ][e doesn't really know the drive is labeled '1' and '2'.

Weakened Power Supply? IO Controller issue?

I need to get this fixed so I can print out some of my Father's writings.
 
Update: I swapped the drives, and no boot. Power light dimly flickers. Swapped drives back, same result. Starting to look like power supply, but why did it work for a little then stop?
 
Last edited:
Yes you can switch the cables so that drive 1 is now 2 and vice versa. I would hook up just drive 2 in the drive 1 spot and see how it responds. It very well could be a short in the drive, from what you're saying. With my IIe there was a problem on the drive 1s circuit board so I just swapped it with the one out of drive 2 and only hooked up drive 1 because OCD.
 
As said in previous post, swapped drives, no boot, back to original config, no boot. Removed drives and power led shines with Apple ][ on monitor, but no drive to boot from!
 
I meant try hooking up ONLY drive 2 in the drive 1 slot. I've been reading this as you just swapping their positions and still having both drives hooked up.
 
With all this drive swapping, it's worth pointing out that if you have the controller with two bare headers on it... if you are "off" by just one pin, you will blow the drive electronics (one of the chips, specifically) on the floppy drive. The symptoms are that the drive will silently destroy your disks. So I'd suggest stopping inserting your important disks now until the situation is remedied.

Back to your original question - it sounds like your power supply is marginal (very typical of this vintage). The drives take a fair amount of power to spin up, and they draw it immediately when the switch is turned on. That's why it works fine when everything is unplugged. So the solution may be to fix the power supply by replacing the capacitors, or get a replacement on the likes of ebay. Then work carefully to test if one or more of your drives are viable.
 
Thanks folks. Based on what I'm seeing on ebay, looks like I'm capacitor shopping!
 
Update: Power supply multi-meter testing

Update: Power supply multi-meter testing

Power supply
pin 3: Spec: +5.3 Measured: +5.2
pin 4: Spec: +12.5 Measured: +12.28
pin 5: Spec: -11.9 Measured: -11.1
pin 6: Spec: -5 Measured: -4.76

Pin 5 is off by over 7 percent
Pin 6 is off by 5 percent
Pins 3 and 4 are out of spec under 2 percent
 
BTW, this is what I did and swapped back only to find same symptom. :0(

arrow_runner said:
I meant try hooking up ONLY drive 2 in the drive 1 slot. I've been reading this as you just swapping their positions and still having both drives hooked up.
Click to expand...
 
UPDATE!

OK found out that I should have tested power supply while installed on board. Setup, tested, Disk 1 starts working, plugged Disk 2 into board, it starts working!

Maybe I knocked some corrosion off the connectors?

Next project: Get the printer hooked up, print files, scan into a modern system as a pdf.

Hoot Hoot!
 
I plugged my //e's parallel card into a modern Dell laser printer, and it printed on the first try from AppleWorks without any modifications. That's just so weird to me.
 
david__schmidt said:
With all this drive swapping, it's worth pointing out that if you have the controller with two bare headers on it... if you are "off" by just one pin, you will blow the drive electronics (one of the chips, specifically) on the floppy drive.
Click to expand...
There's a particular "off by one" error that apparently puts 12 volts across a certain capacitor, causing it to explode with a loud BANG!
Ask me how I know. Yes, one of our sales guys thought he knew what he was doing. He did not.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top