Problems creating a HDOS boot disk for a Heathkit H8

[wstronks]

I just restored a Heathkit H8 and H17 and have problems creating a boot diskette on the H17.
The H8 has a pam8 ROM monitor and the following boards: H8-16 RAM, H-8-2 PARRALEL I/O, H8-5 SERIAL I/O and the controller board.
All tests in H17 manual have passed successfully, the rotation speed of the drives are set.
The Serial I/O does communicate with my terminal emulator sw.

I downloaded Dwight Elvey's Disk Image Transfer Program v9 and started to follow the instruction (great tool and instructions!)
I was successful in creating a Boot Image Transfer disk and can use it to communicate with H89TRANS on the DOS machine.
I can also Open an HDOS h8d file and write it to the H17 disk. It steps to track 39 and returns to the H89TRANS menu.
But the created diskettes won't boot HDOS? When hitting GO at PC 030 000, the disk start turning, the address digits change and after a few seconds halt at 037 127

I have used old Northstar hard sectored diskettes, because I don't have any new ones.
Then I lowered the baudrate to 2400 to see if that would give better results, but same behavior.
Maybe I should try a different f.i. TANDON drive instead of WANGCO 82 drives in the H17?

2 Remarks:
When trying to read-back a created HDOS diskette to a new file for compare, using H89TRANS, it halts after displaying 42 42 after the R.
When checking point 4 under Debugging, my DE register does not show the values as in the instructions.

Thanks, Wilko

 

[wstronks]

UPDATE:
I just replace one WANGCO 782 drive with a Shugart 400.
With this drive I can create a bootable HDOS diskette.
I earlier tested both WANGO 82 drives in the H17 and both did not produce a bootable HDOS disk.
I don't have a manual of the WANCO 82 drive to find out what the problem with these drive might be.
Regards,
Wilko

 

[wstronks]

I found a manual of the Siemens FDD 100-5 which seems to be the same as the WANGCO model 82.
But it did not give me a clue of how to find the cause and how to solve the problem.
- I can create successfully a BOOT IMAGE TRANSFER disk
- This disk boots and loads the loader correct
- This means reading the first sector of track 0 is OK? (I assume that is where the ROM boot reads first)
- This also means that writing the first sector of track 0 is also OK?
- Writing a file to disk with H89TRANS seems OK based on the feedback from H89TRANS and returning to the menu
- The created disk from the file does NOT boot and the H8 ends at address 037 127
- Meaning?
- Next sector reads after the first fail?
- Next track reads fail?

 

[wstronks]

I connected 2 Shugart 400 drives and all works fine. Then connected the WANGCO 82 drives to a DOS system with Imagedisk and was able to create HDOS boot disks.
Put the WANGO's back in the H17 and these boot disks now also boot HDOS on the H8 !!
Only problem that remains is that I cannot mount SY1: in HDOS. it does start the drive, try's to read and returns an error that the disk is not initialized.
If I make that drive and diskette the primary one, it does boot fine and cannot mount the other drive as SY1: ??
Maybe I have not the right jumper settings on the drives (MX, HM, DS's). I don't have the documentation describing how to configure those in a 2 drive H17
Anybody has the instructions for those jumper settings?