5 Oct
2012
5 Oct
'12
9:52 p.m.
On Fri, 5 Oct 2012, David Riley wrote:
On Oct 4, 2012, at 8:57 PM, David Riley wrote:
Compaq used a variant of these at one time. IIRC, you never want to turn
the lever on these without a disk or cardboard insert installed. The small
nylon part that pushes the clamper down can easily crack otherwise. Maybe
they fixed this in later drives? Other than the lever issue, these were
pretty well built and not that hard to service.
I have a number of 5.25" PC floppy drives
that have sat in boxes in my
parents' basement for years (reasonably well climate controlled, drives
never got flooded, etc.) Media preservation isn't really my thing,
since I don't have or come across a lot of media to preserve, but I
figure four or five 5.25" drives could find a good home through this
list. They worked last time they were tested, and I might be persuaded
to test them again if necessary. I even have a 5.25"/3.5" dual drive,
though its cosmetic components are beginning to wear a bit.
OK, here's a list of the drives. Shipping is from ZIP code 19146 in the
USA.
Toshiba ND-0801GR (1.2M) Chinon FR-506 (1.2M)
Typical mass-produced 5.25" of that era and they used a really cheap head
actuator motor. Not nearly as easy to service as say a Teac FD-55. The
FR-506 was among my least favorite 5.25" drives.
Fujitsu M2553 (1.2M)
These are built like a tank, and like the Teac FD-55, use a full size
stepper motor to actuate the heads.
Panasonic JU-475-5 (1.2M)
If this is the drive I think it is, these were really well built. They had
lots of jumper options and the LED plugged into a socket on the front and
didn't use a lens so you could swap from amber/green with only having to
remove the faceplate. I saw examples of these drives well into the 486 era
with the only real difference being the faceplate and LED color. If
someone wants to put a blue T1-3/4 LED in a 5.25" drive, this is one of
the easier drives to convert.
Newtronics D509V (1.2M)
Aka Mitsumi. Mitsumi used a lot of Toshiba parts but from memory these
drives tended to be a little better engineered than similar drives from
Toshiba.
Looks like they're all 1.2M, so apologies for
those looking for
low-density drives are out of luck here. The dual drive is in another
box somewhere, so I'll have to look for that, but if anyone wants any of
the above, I'll be glad to send 'em on.
I still have several shelves of 5.25" drives myself and eventually I'm
going to need to clean out some of my old inventory too. I have a huge
stack of Teac FD-55GFR drives with gray faceplates and green LED lenses
that came out of 486 era systems that had 5.25" drives removed to make
room for cdrom drives. Is there any demand today for such 1.2MB drives
with gray faceplates?