Thank you! Really glad to hear that.

Couldn't agree more and love seeing these old computers being saved for many more years to come.

You all prolly dont give a shit but does someone know of a tool to log back into an Instagram account..? I was stupid forgot the account password. I appreciate any help you can give me!

@Colten Westin Instablaster :)

@Forrest Quinton Thanks so much for your reply. I found the site thru google and Im waiting for the hacking stuff now. Looks like it's gonna take quite some time so I will get back to you later when my account password hopefully is recovered.

Thank you so much for the comment! Much appreciated.

So they went cheap over time

Haha, there are so many cringe things in that video... But it's a good example of how you can start making videos before you know what you're doing 😃

Thanks! I do have more Amstrad videos in the works. Coming soon! As for how to test boards using the multimeter, check out the C64 repair part 2 (kzfaq.info/get/bejne/h9OFbNhjnNuZqp8.html). There I specifically talk about how you can use the multimeter to test for activity on a line... only to then realize that I was tricked by that when I looked at it with the osciloscope. So yeah, you can use it, but it's less than ideal.

You're very welcome. I'm glad it helped! (and yikes, I think that was my first-ever video!!! 🤣).

Thank you! Will do!

Also for us ZX Spectrum +3 owners :D

Welcome on board! I'd like to think that my quality bar has risen since I started, so some of these first episodes are a bit rough around the edges. You may want to start from the most recent one and work your way backwards 😃 Yes, this is a 3" drive, not the common 3.5" one. Rumor has it that Sugar got them really cheap in some deal, and shoehorned them in all his computers. Another rumor also says that the CPC 6128 was intended for the US market and flopped before arrival because it was using that disk format. Oops!

yes, the 3.5" floppy drive was designed by Sony, while the 3.0" floppy was created by another japanese company (Hitachi or Matsushita, I can't remember). It was created as a cheaper competitor to Sony's drives, but came out too late as Sony started giving licenses for other manufacturers to produce 720KB and 1.44MB 3.5" drives under licence (with Sony remaining the only vendor of 2.88MB 3.5" drives). The prices of floppy drives started to fall during the second half of the 1980s, making the 3.0" uncompetitive. Amstrad's Alan Sugar negociated a bargain deal to get hold of millions of 3.0" drives for his Z80 machines.

@@NoelsRetroLab They were used on the short lived Nintendo Disk System, so they were cheap to get from Matsushita/Ricoh

Jaja... me alegro!

Buenas! Una pregunta: dimensiones de la correa? Gracias!

That makes a lot of sense for the moving parts of a floppy disk drive. I'm saving that one for future reference because sometimes I feel that lithium grease is just a tad too thick at lower temperatures (and maybe it's totally fine).

My pleasure!

Hi! I got them a while back from Ali. They sell them in mixed-size bags for very cheap, so you only end up with a handful that fit, but it's still worth it. The important thing is that they're flat cross section, not square or rounded like the tape deck.

I'm glad you're enjoying the videos! Your poor drive sounds like it has some issues. Which error do you get? The disk read fail one? Are you 100% sure the disks are working fine? They'll often go bad and cause error messages like that. It could be the sensor for track 0, but that will depend on which errors you get. I hope to cover that one in a future video. Let me know and good luck!

@@NoelsRetroLab I got read errors when I tried to load, and write errors when I tried to save programs. The disks are also used pre-owned so I'm only about 15% sure on those :) Wont get to take another look until next weekend but I'll keep hacking away at it. Thanks for your help I'll keep you posted.

@@NoelsRetroLab Noel, good news this weekend. I disassembled the electronics of the drive and resoldered any joints that looked to be suspect. This changed nothing, still the same disc read errors. Then I tried something that I probably should not have. I marked the position of the stepper motor and removed it. I then took a look to see that it was not broken or damaged on the inside. There was a little gunk in there. Could have been grease, but it looked like gone off rubber. I removed as much as I could and reseated the motor assembly. I tried the "cat" command, read error, moved the motor a fraction clockwise and continued until "cat" worked then I tried to run a program, read error, turned the motor a fraction clockwise "cat" and run" and finally success. Of the eight disks I have seven work well rarely a read error with "cat" now but it still happens from time to time (I suppose there is still some fine tuning to be done). BTW the drive is an EME-156. Again many thanks for the video it has been a real help to me ;)

Haha, good question! I have it on the Dandanator ROM cartridge, so I can always load it. That's ideal. On disk is also useful, but only in those times that the disk is actually working.

It could be lots of different things unfortunately. I recommend reading this thread carefully: www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/hardware-related/fixing-floppy-drives/100/ Things to try out: try a different drive (to narrow it down to the drive or the controller and/or cables, make sure it's getting 5V and 12V (sometimes the transistors that provide the 12V fail), make sure the RDY signal is being set correctly and gets all the way to the controller. Feel free to post on that thread with your findings and you'll get more help. Good luck!

Yes, it actually is soldered there with a few cables. Check out my video where I repair a ZX Spectrum +3 with the same kind of drive. There I end up taking the board completely apart to test it on another drive, so you'll see how it's hooked up.

Good question. I don't know! I would guess yes, but someone else would have to confirm it.

@@NoelsRetroLab thank you so much, I'm trying to hook one up to a DOS PC, and the answers I've gotten have been a mixed bag.

@@NoelsRetroLab your video has been very useful! Now I know where to put that pin!

@@NoelsRetroLab the one I've got is the EME-232V , a much later revision I'm worried about the motor not being aligned like in your other video, as the drive was disassembled when I got it.

Start checking that the head motor is getting proper voltage (they often have dry joints in the power connector), and then check to see if it gets signals to move. If it does, then it might be something more complicated in the drive board.

@@NoelsRetroLab Thanks for the reply, i have read that there is a mod with a 3.5 floppy disk, is this a working mod just in case the 3 disk is beyond repair at least for me ?

Haha, probably because it was my first video and people were going easy on me 🤣

Yeah, it looks that way!