Quantum LP52S Amiga drive

[jdryyz]

Hi!

I would like to recover data from an Amiga formatted Quantum LP52S (50MB SCSI) drive.

Everything sounds right with the drive but the geometry is not correct. It reports 0MB. I have tried hooking it up to a couple of different Amigas and even a SCSI adapter in a PC running WinUAE. They all report the same.

From reading these forums, data about geometry could be stored on the platter(s) and this is probably not a firmware issue?

I was hoping the incorrect drive size might not matter in the case of raw imaging software, but it goes nowhere with something that it sees containing "0" data.

I have a similar drive I could use as a donor if that could be helpful in some way.

[fzabkar]

Later model Quantum PCBs had a UART port that provided diagnostic output. FWIW, I notice that pins 21 and 22 of U203 are the Tx and Rx pins of a serial port. Perhaps you could hook up a USB-TTL RS232 adaptor? I suspect that one of the marked test points (5 6 7 8) may be connected to Tx and Rx.

http://www.bitsavers.org/components/nec/uPD783xx/NEC_uPD78310A_datasheet_1993.pdf

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wKEAAOSwuQ9jWdsN/s-l1600.jpg (PCB photo)

[jdryyz]

That is certainly an different approach. I see the adapters aren't too pricey.

My concern would be with what diagnostic data would it be sending out. Unless it is plain English or it uses simple codes, I don't think it would help me much.

[fzabkar]

See https://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?p=196496#p196496