Testing Mitsumi D509V

[raoulduke]

I don't know which category to file this under; sorry.

I got a Mitsumi D509V, which is a 1.2mb (I think) drive, in hopes of replacing the full-height 360k Compaq drive I've been using in my Windows 7 PC (which has a floppy port on the motherboard). I don't know much about diagnostic utilities but so far I've only been able to format/write images in 360k format but not read back anything [which in fairness I'm not sure I've tested with the 360k drive].

Still, could someone recommend a utility to test the range of this drive's functionality? I have thus far never had a problem using either a 3.5" or the 5.25" drive (from 1985, I think, no less) that I mentioned.

 

[Stone]

Put a 1.2M floppy disk in the drive and format it. Then copy some files to it and read them. If all goes fine the drive is most likely OK.

 

[raoulduke]

Thanks. I'll try that later; I have 1 2HD disk, but that may not work given my setup - whether or not the drive works; it didn't work with a DD disk or a 3.5" drive.* [That 3.5" drive works fine, but it just gives an I/O error through Windows 7; maybe a driver issue. It and the 360k PC drive work fine with OmniFlop, which uses a different driver].

But let me clarify, I am going to primarily or maybe exclusively use it with DD and possibly SD disks. So I would like to test functionality re: those. I know HD drives are not guaranteed to work with DD/SD disks, but unless someone knows something I don't about this model I'd still like to test it.

Rather than trial by fire, I'm hoping there's some sort of utility.

*I use them one at a time (i.e. that's not any part of this problem); the setup has not been able to read 2 drives simultaneously, previously.

 

[Stone]

Hehehehe... trying to use a 1.2M drive to read SD floppies is going to prove to be harrowing, at best!

Don't be foolish -- use the correct drive.

And forget about using WIN7 in general with a 5¼" drive. They just don't like each other.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I assume that your BIOS setup identifies this as a 1.2M drive. You should probably test by booting DOS, then trying your format and read/write tests.--fewer hoops to jump through.

If you use MS-DOS 6.22 or so, you can use the "FORMAT drive: /U /F:xxx" variant, which won't try to check the disk for a pre-existing format. Saves a lot of time.