Replace floppy drive on olivetti pcs86

[amico]

I have find a Olivetti pcs86 with broken 720 kb floppy drive.
Is possible to replace with 1.44 mb IDE modern floppy drive?
In the ibm ps/2 is not possible because ibm have ESDI floppy drive.
If replace is possible,is need to configure the bios with a program to update the new size of floppy drive? I have all original diskette.
I have search info with google and this is the system hardware:

* 640k RAM.
* CPU: NEC V30 at 8MHz.
* Two 3.5" drive bays. The right-hand one holds a floppy drive; the left-hand one can hold a second floppy or a hard drive.
* Three full-length 8-bit ISA slots, on a riser card.
* Built-in floppy controller, which supports 1.4Mb floppy drives.
* Built-in IDE controller. I suspect this is XTA rather than standard ATA.
* Real-time clock (on my PCS86, the clock battery does not hold charge).
* Integrated Paradise VGA chipset.

 

[IBMMuseum]

I have found an Olivetti pcs86 with broken 720 kb floppy drive. Is possible to replace with 1.44 mb IDE modern floppy drive?...
...* Built-in floppy controller, which supports 1.4Mb floppy drives...
...If replacement is possible, is it needed to configure the bios with a program to update the new size of floppy drive?...

You may have answered your own question here. Normally the XT FDC cards that supported the 1.44Mb drives had their own BIOS extension to automatically configure for the installed drives (I've seen jumper positions that had to be set too). There is no BIOS setup per se on this level of system.

...In the ibm ps/2 is not possible because ibm have ESDI floppy drive...

You will need to explain the source of this data to me...

 

[dongfeng]

At the very least, a 1.44MB floppy drive will work but only at the 720kB capacity.

 

[JohnElliott]

I'm the original source of that hardware information. When I got my PCS86, it didn't have a working floppy drive. I replaced the broken drive with a Teac 1.4M drive, and it happily booted from a 1.4M boot floppy without the need to change any motherboard jumpers (has the PCS86 even got any? I can't remember). The previous drive looked original but I don't know what its capacity was.

While we're on the subject of the PCS86, it's got two 30-pin SIMM sockets on the motherboard. If anyone has any idea what sort of RAM they take or has any drivers that can use RAM in them (presumably as EMS) I'd like to know.

 

[IBMMuseum]

...While we're on the subject of the PCS86, it's got two 30-pin SIMM sockets on the motherboard. If anyone has any idea what sort of RAM they take or has any drivers that can use RAM in them (presumably as EMS) I'd like to know.

Assumably they would be 256Kb modules, which could be in either similiar pinouts of "IBM" or "Industry Standard". That makes 512Kb, and another 128Kb on the mainboard takes it to the listed 640Kb. Probably a very similiar arrangement to the 8086-based PS/2 Model 30 (which had two 30-pin 256Kb SIMM modules & 128Kb soldered in).

 

[Woodym1]

ESDI Floppy

ESDI Floppy

The was never an ESDI floppy. From any company. It would have been pointless. But if you still want a weird floppy, shop Pertec. 8" diskette, linear actuator, 60% uptime. But really fast cylinder to cylinder seek times!!!!

 

[JohnElliott]

Assumably they would be 256Kb modules, which could be in either similiar pinouts of "IBM" or "Industry Standard". That makes 512Kb, and another 128Kb on the mainboard takes it to the listed 640Kb. Probably a very similiar arrangement to the 8086-based PS/2 Model 30 (which had two 30-pin 256Kb SIMM modules & 128Kb soldered in).

I don't think it works like that, because the memory test gives 640k free when the sockets are both empty.

 

[JohnElliott]

Apologies for the thread necromancy, but I've now got to the bottom of the question of PCS86, floppies and jumpers.

The motherboard has eight jumpers in the rear right-hand corner. I've numbered them 7-0, with 7 being nearest the front.

              7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0
<--- Front    :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :  Back -->

Jumpers 0 and 1 give the type of drive A:

              7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0
              :  :  :  :  :  : [:][:]   360k
              :  :  :  :  :  :  : [:]   1.2M
              :  :  :  :  :  : [:] :    720k
              :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :    1.4M

Jumpers 3 and 2 give the type of drive B:

              7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0
              :  :  :  : [:][:] :  :    360k
              :  :  :  :  : [:] :  :    1.2M
              :  :  :  : [:] :  :  :    720k
              :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :    1.4M

Jumper 7 indicates the presence of an XTA hard drive:

              7  6  5  4  3  2  1  0
             [:] :  :  :  :  :  :  :    Present
              :  :  :  :  :  :  :  :    Absent

I don't think the BIOS uses jumpers 4, 5 or 6 for anything. Or at least, I haven't found code that checks them.

 

[Stone]

If you're looking for SIMMs...