9 Jun
2007
9 Jun
'07
1:47 p.m.
Hi,
I have a Sony MP-F52W-30 floppy disk drive, which I need to replace - it
semi worked until recently (would read but not write) until I zapped it by
accident. It comes from an HP 1650B logic analyzer - does anyone know if
it's a 600rpm or a standard 300rpm device? If it's a 600rpm then I've found
someone who has one but wants a lot for it, otherwise I'm reasonably sure I
can modify the cable connections to use a standard/modern drive.
I don;t know that specific number, but the MP-F52W-50 is the half-height
drive used in the 9114B. It has a single 34 pin connector, power on the
odd-numbered pin,s and is a 600rpm drive.
Go to http://www.hpmuseum.net/ and follow the links for disks and then
the 9114. On the 'product documentation' page you'll find 'my'
schematics
for the 9114V. That includes the drive itself.
You may be able to compare your drive with the schematics to see how
similar it is. My guess is it'll be very similar, with perhaps a few
links changed, and will be a 600rpm drive.
I don;t know what's wrong with your drive, but as I said the other day,
many parts are the same as in an Apple 800K drive. The only main part
you can't get from there is the digital ASIC.
Unfortunately (for you), the half-height drives don't suffer the smae
dried-up grease problems as the full-height ones. So you won't find one
with a head ripped off, which you could then use as a source of
electronic parts. And the half-height drives are rarer than the
full-heigth ones anyway.
I don;'t know how easy it would be, but you might be able to modify the
wiring to use a full-height drive with the 26 pin connector. The 9114A
scheamtics (same place as above) include schematics of 2 versions of that
drive.
On the motherboard side, it has a Zilog Z0765A FDC, and I've successfully
created disks on my PC (using HP's LIFUTIL) that worked on the drive. This
makes me think that the drive is a standard 300rpm. Any thoughts?
No. The 600rpm drives use twice the data rate of the 300rpm ones, so the
magnetic parttern on the disk is unchanged. There is no problem at all in
reading disks from a 600rpm drive on a PC (assuming the date encoding is
compatble, etc), I routinely read dioks from my 9114s on a PC.
Can you not measure the read clock freqeuncy at the disk controller chip
to determine what data rate it's expecting amd then work back from that
to figure out the drive spindle spee
-tony