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Rainbow vs. Grey?

J

jimmieloveshissunfire

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Joined
Jan 20, 2009
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37
Location
Hole in the Wall, Georgia
I have two disk II drives. One has a rainbow cord, and the other has a grey cord, will they both work with my Apple //e or is one not compatible? I hooked up the Grey one recently and all it does is continuously whir but not read the disk. The Rainbow one does nothing. Can anyone help me?
 
The cable coloring makes no difference; they're interchangeable. You need to make sure the 20 pin header on the controller mates correctly with the cable end connector, otherwise you've just smoked the drives.
 
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jimmieloveshissunfire said:
the grey corded one will light up and make a whirring noise, but it never stops.
Click to expand...
It never stops, even if you insert a bootable disk? Then, either it's still fried, or the disk isn't bootable any more (which can happen if you insert a disk into a fried drive). You might go through one of the bare-metal bootstrapping scenarios on the ADTPro site (http://adtpro.sourceforge.net/bootstrap.html ) to see if, after booting DOS or ProDOS over the serial port, you can get the drive to talk.
 
DO NOT insert a disk into that drive!

If it spins and lights up constantly as soon as power is applied then open up the drive and replace the 74LS125 chip. This chip gets fried if you plug the ribbon cable in backwards.

If that chip gets fried then any disk you put in the drive will have the data erased for the track the head is sitting on at the moment.

The drive shouldn't do anything until you issue a PR#6 command at which point it should rehome itself and try to load the disk. If it won't rehome then you have a drive or a controller problem.

If the light is on constantly then you most likely have a fried LS125 chip from a backwards cable.

RJ
 
channelmaniac said:
The drive shouldn't do anything until you issue a PR#6 command at which point it should rehome itself and try to load the disk. If it won't rehome then you have a drive or a controller problem.

If the light is on constantly then you most likely have a fried LS125 chip from a backwards cable.

RJ
Click to expand...

I hate to say this but you're wrong there. When you first turn on an Apple II, at least from the II+ onward, the disk drive will come on because the computer is set up to autoboot the disk drive to load the operating system from the disk into the computer memory.

Something he could try to stop the drive running after he turns on the computer is to press the Control key and the Reset key, at the same time, and that should stop the drive running, if I remember right. Then he could try PR#6 to see if the computer will read the disk correctly. Another option would be to try typing in a short Applesoft program to see if the computer works correctly in the first place.

Just my two cents worth,
Dean
 
magnusfalkirk said:
I hate to say this but you're wrong there. When you first turn on an Apple II, at least from the II+ onward, the disk drive will come on because the computer is set up to autoboot the disk drive to load the operating system from the disk into the computer memory.

Something he could try to stop the drive running after he turns on the computer is to press the Control key and the Reset key, at the same time, and that should stop the drive running, if I remember right. Then he could try PR#6 to see if the computer will read the disk correctly. Another option would be to try typing in a short Applesoft program to see if the computer works correctly in the first place.

Just my two cents worth,
Dean
Click to expand...

Yeah, I hosed it. I should've said if you turn it on if it doesn't rehome then don't put the disk in. It's been too long. ;)

I used to work in a grey market repair depot and if you turn the computer on and it doesn't rehome and the drive stays on then you need to replace that LS125 IC.
 
jimmieloveshissunfire said:
Everything on my Apple is 100% functional except the disk drives. I just replaced the 74sl125, but I guess I can check it again.
Click to expand...
Did you check the cables are correctly connected to the controller? They can also easily be plugged in off by one pin, i.e. with the plug only connected to half the header's pins, which will also fry some silicon. In any case, I'd try just hooking up one drive and getting that running for starters.
jimmieloveshissunfire said:
It won't load any disks right now.
Click to expand...
Are these different disks than you were trying to boot before? If they're the same ones, they may have been zapped by a bad drive.
 
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