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Replacing old hard drive with new?

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NexusAspect

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Aug 14, 2010
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I bought an old LT-3200 Toshiba laptop at some flea market last week. However, the hard drive inside seems defunct. The hard drive is an old Seagate ST-125 3,5" 20 or 21 mb. As it is deemed defunct, is it possible to replace this with a very newer one, like a 1 gb or something? How would one go about doing this in that case? Would the PSU cope? Also, there is no OS floppy so would MS-DOS 3.2 work if moved to a floppy?

Finally, I'm new here, signed up solely to ask this question. However, the purchase of this old laptop and an old HP from the mid-eighties has sparked an interest in vintage computers and you might see me more on this forum. Therefore, I'm sorry if this thread is in the wrong category or sub-forum, I simply did not know where to start.
 
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The ST125 is an MFM drive, so you're going to have to replace it with another (old) MFM drive, which haven't been made for at least 20 years. 3.5" MFM drives are pretty thin on the ground.

Is the LT3200 anything like the T3200?
 
Chuck(G) said:
The ST125 is an MFM drive, so you're going to have to replace it with another (old) MFM drive, which haven't been made for at least 20 years. 3.5" MFM drives are pretty thin on the ground.

Is the LT3200 anything like the T3200?
Click to expand...
Yeah, I'm confused too. I'm not aware of a Toshiba LT3200 although there seems to be a Gateway and maybe also an HP by that model no.

I do have a T3200, but it's a 40MB drive and IDE AFAIK. Just turned it on after a lengthy sleep and of course the CMOS battery's dead (or bad) so I guess I'll have to open it up anyway; we'll see what kind of HD it has then.
 
MikeS said:
I do have a T3200, but it's a 40MB drive and IDE AFAIK.
Click to expand...
Nope, just opened her up and she's got that funny small 28-pin interface, probably the same as the early T3100. My 3100e has a normal IDE, but I guess the 3200 came along after the 3100 and before the 3100e.

Anyway, probably not what the OP's talking about (if it isn't spam anyway).
 
Chuck(G) said:
The ST125 is an MFM drive, so you're going to have to replace it with another (old) MFM drive, which haven't been made for at least 20 years. 3.5" MFM drives are pretty thin on the ground.

Is the LT3200 anything like the T3200?
Click to expand...

I can probably get you some pictures by tomorrow. Right now the computer is taken apart and you probably wont get a lot out of looking at it. However, I know that the screen is smaller than the T3200 and the lights for NumLock, Capslock and Scrolllock are situated elsewhere. I haven't found much info on the LT3200 online, however I can imagine the L standning for Light or similar.

Regarding the hard drive, why must it be a 3.5" MFM? Why can't I use a newer one?
 
You have to use whatever the machine came with since it will not boot from anything else. With a desktop you can get away with using a bootable SCSI card and drive, or an IDE controller if the BIOS allows it.
 
So it's because it's a laptop?

The problem is also strange. When I boot the computer I get to choose Setup/Diag. In Diag the Hard Drive isn't listed. When I opened the laptop I found one loose wire, however, the hard drive hade no available slots. Should I try switching the only cable to the other one, since it seems theyre the same size with equal amount of "holes" for the pins.
 
I have a feeling that it is going to be impractical to replace the HDD and you will just have to use the machine from a floppy. I have a T3100 with the same problem and that's what I do.

You can probably find Toshiba DOS on the net somewhere. Toshiba used to have it online. If not, perhaps someone can send you a bootable image. Here is a link to some interesting Toshiba utilities.

Toshiba Europe is also interesting.
 
NexusAspect said:
Regarding the hard drive, why must it be a 3.5" MFM? Why can't I use a newer one?
Click to expand...

Because the hard drive controller is located on your 3200 motherboard, not in the drive; IDE and SCSI drives have their low-level controller integrated into the drive. Think of an MFM drive as a big fast floppy drive--doesn't know what you put into it and doesn't care--just stick anything on the data line and pull the Write Enable line true. IDE and SCSI drives, on the other hand, use a fixed sector size and a high-level command set.

Good luck in finding an ST125.
 
NexusAspect said:
So it's because it's a laptop?

The problem is also strange. When I boot the computer I get to choose Setup/Diag. In Diag the Hard Drive isn't listed. When I opened the laptop I found one loose wire, however, the hard drive hade no available slots. Should I try switching the only cable to the other one, since it seems theyre the same size with equal amount of "holes" for the pins.
Click to expand...
Huh? Switch which only cable to the other what?
A loose wire or cable?
How many cables go to that ST-125, and how many connectors in each?
I think some detailed pictures are in order.
If it's really a standard ST-125 your chances are a lot better than if you had an early T3100 or 3200.
 
Perhaps though the laptop will take another, larger MFM drive depending on what the controller is programmed to recognize? Sometimes you find those on eBay, although in unknown condition.

The ST-125 obviously connects through the ST-412 interface, which is both physically and techincally different from IDE/ATA drives, not to mention the location of the controller as Chuck mentioned. Thus it would be like trying to use a Ford gearbox as a slot-in replacement on a Toyota car. Actually I believe a highly skilled car technician could make it work, but most of us would be stuck looking for a spare original Toyota gearbox when the old one has broken down.

But yes, pictures will help everyone see what we are talking about and possible solutions.
 
I wouldn't count on it being a standard ST-412 interface even if it is an ST-125; Toshiba used an odd (proprietary?) interface with their MFM (ESDI) drives and the OP's talk of holes and pins (instead of edge connectors) sounds like one of those. But maybe the HDA itself could be replaced if the PCB's OK.

Of course some previous owner might just have stuffed a normal ST-125 into the space, not connected to anything ;-)
 
Ill get back to you in 24 hours with pics of the dismantled laptop including pics of the HD. It's a cable connected from somewhere but i cant find where to plug the other end.
 
I'm also trusting that this isn't an ST125A (IDE) or ST125N (SCSI) and that "ST125" (MFM) is exactly what it is.

An MFM ST-125 has two cables. Here's a photo of the drive:

ST-125-HDD.jpg
 
I'm sorry, but there will be no pics today. Will try to get them tomorrow.

Chuck, that is the one. It's comforting that those are the only two, I still wonder what the last one is. Will grab a picture soon. The thing is I have so much to do right now. Gotta clean my entire garage tomorrow and then school starts on Thursday so I have to prepare. Taking those pictures will not take more than 10 minutes but I'd rather get the garage done first.
 
Plus there's a possibility that the hard drive is just fine, but the battery is dead and/or HD geometry settings are incorrect.
 
Paul's referring to the CMOS battery which saves the configuration settings for the BIOS of the laptop. If the battery is no longer working (which they normally only live 5-6 years) it will lose it's configuration each time it's booted up. The reason that matters is if the BIOS is controlling the drive type or drive settings (cylinder, head, and sector numbers) it won't access the drive correctly. No damage will be done to the hard drive but it will fail to boot if it doesn't know where the correct data is located geometrically.
 
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