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Help with Floppy Emu and Strange Color Classic Error Messages

Planez

New member
Hey everyone!

I’m a college student in aeronautical engineering and I recently got into the vintage PC hobby by getting a beautiful Color Classic I running on Mac OS 7.1. I also got the floppy emu model C, and after adding a ribbon cable extender to the floppy drive ribbon cable so I could connect the Emu outside, I tried it out. I can actually open files onto the Color Classic fine, I’ve even opened up a couple of “Read Me” files. HOWEVER, about every seconds I will get an error message: “This disk is unreadable: Do you want to initialize it?” With the options “Eject” and “Initialize”. Clicking eject sends the message away but it pops up 10 seconds later. Clicking initialize brings up a second error message: “initialization failed! This disc is write protected” and then after I click “ok” the cycle starts over again in less than 10 seconds. I imagine if this error didn’t keep occurring I might be able to use the software id like and download some neat stuff. I’ve already read through the floppy emu troubleshooting guide, website, comments section, and email tech support too! Tech support referred me to here after giving some solid suggestions I also gave a go. Without any success unfortunately. I just got this really nice Emu C as a Christmas present and this is most likely my last chance to get this to work! Any help would be appreciate, and don’t make fun of me too much if I’ve done something stupid ;)
 

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AwkwardPotato

Well-known member
Does that error show up when you format/access a disk with the stock floppy drive, and has the motherboard in the Color Classic been recapped? If you see the same error with the stock drive, there may be capacitor-related damage near the motherboard's edge connector (which carries all the signalling to the disk drive).
 

Planez

New member
Does that error show up when you format/access a disk with the stock floppy drive, and has the motherboard in the Color Classic been recapped? If you see the same error with the stock drive, there may be capacitor-related damage near the motherboard's edge connector (which carries all the signalling to the disk drive).
It does not with the floppy drive, and it has also not been recapped (I plan on getting that done soon).

However I did find a solution, but only after about 6-7 hours of playing around and trying things. For some reason, when I open MacDraw the error messages stop. I can even close MacDraw completely and use other apps using the Emu but for some reason this trick only works with MacDraw and no other app. Only opening MacDraw somehow magically stops the error messages from popping up every 10 seconds and making it nearly unusable. I literally have no idea why this works but I’m happy I found a solution anyways…
 

bigmessowires

Well-known member
I've been trying to help Planez troubleshoot this on his Color Classic, and it's not simply a problem with his system. Over the years I’ve had a handful of similar reports of mysterious problems when a Floppy Emu is connected to the internal floppy connector of a Color Classic, replacing the built-in floppy drive. I'd appreciate any pearls of wisdom here, especially from Color Classic experts. Here's a summary of everything I know, including the new info from Planez:

Some CC users see an error dialog saying “This disk is unreadable: Do you want to initialize it?” with options to initialize or eject. If they choose to eject, a few seconds later the dialog will just appear again. They’ll be stuck in this loop forever. I don’t have a CC so I’ve never found an explanation for this, or why it only seems to affect some CC users.

A few more clues:

  • This happens even when no disk image has been selected on the Floppy Emu - it's emulating an empty disk drive.
  • If you select a disk image on the Floppy Emu, the image will mount OK on the Color Classic desktop and you can use the disk normally. But you'll also continue to see those error dialogs appear every few seconds.
  • If you can manage to launch MacDraw 1.9 from the Floppy Emu (during the time between error dialogs appearing), then the problem disappears. No more error dialogs. You can then quit MacDraw and eject the disk image. No other programs or games appear to have the same effect, only MacDraw.
  • If you restart the computer, the error dialogs begin appearing again, until the next time MacDraw is launched.

Possible theories:

#1. The CC thinks there are two floppy drives present: one that’s working normally, and a second drive that appears like a bad disk, even when the first drive is empty. Two drives on one connector shouldn’t even be possible, but maybe there’s some unique dual-drive hardware feature of the CC that’s confusing things? I can’t imagine why MacDraw would affect this, though.

#2. There’s simply a bug (or a “behavior difference”) in the CC's floppy controller code that causes it to trip up when encountering the Floppy Emu and get into a screwed-up state - maybe if it encounters a particular type of disk error or disk timeout at just the right time during startup, then it can never recover correctly. Perhaps MacDraw coincidentally performs some series of disk I/O actions that leaves the floppy controller code in a new, corrected state.

#3. Something else... voltage levels, timing differences, power supply, or the curse of Steve Jobs.
 

ironborn65

Well-known member
Since my problem with the looping-annoying "This disk is unreadable: Do you want to initialize it?" started when I removed the floppy drive, I just tried to re-installed it.
... and it works just fine now.
I replaced the original non working drive with another drive I fixed a while ago.
And it still works.

So the lesson learned is ... I dunno. It works ;)
 
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