8 Oct
2007
8 Oct
'07
8:05 p.m.
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best
specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision.
According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something
about this?
By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for
the "ideal" half-height.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
8 Oct
8 Oct
8:45 p.m.
---------------------------------------- > Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 20:05:29 -0700 >
From: dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best
specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision.
According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something
about this?
By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for
the "ideal" half-height.
Hi David
The best drives to mount on a PC are those with direct drive and
use band drives from the stepper.
These are the most stable.
Belt drives tend to slip.
Dwight
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8:46 p.m.
On Mon, 8 Oct 2007, David Griffith wrote:
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives.
One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best
specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision.
According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something
about this?
By the way, I have an IBM-branded full-height Tandon that I will trade for
the "ideal" half-height.
My favorite for "360K" formats is the Tandon Tm100.
It tends to work better with flux-transition boards than any of the
others.
Are you sure that you want to try to do C64 on your PC?
TEC is OK, but I prefer the TEAC 55B for 360K, and 55FG for 720k/1.2M.
9 p.m.
On Monday 08 October 2007 23:05, David Griffith wrote:
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives.
One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc.
I don't know how you're going to do that for c64 disks, since they use a
completely different recording method. If there's some way to deal with that
oddball format with a standard drive I'd sure like to know about it!
What should I look for when choosing such a drive?
The best specimen I have
right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. According to the tag,
it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something about this?
Not much offhand. TEC apparently stands (stood?) for Tokyo Electric Company
last I heard.
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
9:30 p.m.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Roy J. Tellason wrote:
After pawing through the list archives, I came to the conclusion that it
would be best to leave the TEC drive in the Morrow and sell it as-is even
though it has only one drive.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
On Monday 08 October 2007 23:05, David Griffith
wrote:
I'll be using a Catweasel for handling C64 disks.
(http://amiga.think42.com/news/news99_e.htm and
http://www.jschoenfeld.com/indexe.htm)
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy
drives. One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc.
I don't know how you're going to do that for c64 disks, since they use a
completely different recording method. If there's some way to deal with that
oddball format with a standard drive I'd sure like to know about it! What should I
look for when choosing such a drive? The best specimen I have
right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision. According to the tag,
it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something about this?
Not much offhand. TEC apparently stands (stood?) for Tokyo Electric Company
last I heard. 
9 Oct
9 Oct
4:41 a.m.
So, I'm faced with a bunch of 360k floppy drives. One of them I will put
in my main desktop machine for replicating floppies for, say, my C64,
Kaypro, etc. What should I look for when choosing such a drive? The best
specimen I have right now was taken from a Morrow Micro-Decision.
According to the tag, it's a "TEC FB-503". Can someone tell me something
about this?
I've had "not the greatest" luck with TEC drives. Out of the 4-5 I've
come across in recent years, I've had two failures. In both cases the
drive simply can no longer read - schematics and technical info. have
been non-existant. (btw, one was from a Micro-Decision, the other was
a single-sided variant of the same drive from a Nabu cable computer).
[Really annoying thing about the TEC/Nabu - the TEC drives have the
data connector on the opposite side from "most everyone else", and
the Nabu drive enclosure uses a circuit board behind the drive with
really short (ie: 2 inches) data cables - impossible to use another
drive without modification]
I've had excellent results with TEAC FD-55B for 360k drives. The
Panasonic drives have worked well for me also.
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
9:38 a.m.
Teac FD-55Bxxx's are okay; Toshiba drives are very much ignored--I've
got a couple of ND-01014's that I use for "tough cases" that will
often work when nothing else does. There have been some YE Data (YD-
580B) and NEC (1053) drives that I've used with decent results.
Fred mentions the Tandon TM-100's; they're not bad, but they are belt-
drive. I tweak one of the low-pass filter caps on the drive
electronics to give a bit more gain on these.
Micropolis 1016-2 likewise are belt drive, but with a leadscrew
positioner--they're slow, but indestructible, if the drive belt
holds.
Note that if you use belt-drive units, the tachometer circuit tends
to be pretty simple, so you'll need to keep tabs on the spindle speed
at regular intervals.
Drives I don't like: Qume 142 and 542; CDC 9428; Shugart SA-450.
Note that many older drives will require more power, if that's an
issue for you.
I've used others; but they didn't make enough of an impression to
stick around. If you're going to use hard-sector diskettes from time
to time, make sure that your drive will work with them. Some later-
model (for 360K, that is) drives will wait until a "drive ready"
condition exists (i.e., the spindle is at speed) before gating the
read signal to the host.
Cheers,
Chuck
1:09 p.m.
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Micropolis 1016-2 likewise are belt drive, but with a
leadscrew
positioner--they're slow, but indestructible, if the drive belt
holds.
With a new belt now and then, the Micropolis will outlast all of us.
Drives I don't like: Qume 142
slow, and the
second most unreliable that I've used (after the BASF 2/3
height)
Shugart SA-450.
I've had excellent luck with
Shugart 455s, which seems to be the same
drive as Panasonic and Matsushita.
Note that many older drives will require more power,
if that's an
issue for you.
I learned early on that the drives don't have to be on the same
power
supply as the motherboard.
Teac FD-55Bxxx's are okay; . . .
I've used others; but they didn't make enough of an impression to
stick around. If you're going to use hard-sector diskettes from time
to time, make sure that your drive will work with them. Some later-
model (for 360K, that is) drives will wait until a "drive ready"
condition exists (i.e., the spindle is at speed) before gating the
read signal to the host.
Teac is one of the ones where masking off the index must
be done in the
cable, not by covering the hole in the disk jacket. In addition to hard
sectored, that is an issue with Cromemco, some Kaypros, etc. (The 10x512
short gap problem)
6284
days inactive
6284
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7 comments
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cclist＠sydex.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dave06a＠dunfield.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
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rtellason＠verizon.net