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Problem with ps/2 floppy

sbrown

Member
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
Messages
37
I picked up a 55sx recently and found out that the floppy drive is only useful as a bookend now. Maybe I'm completely wrong on my assumption, but after looking up some pinouts it seems I should be able to patch a cable and use a non ps/2 floppy so that I can use the reference disk when needed.

I tried this using a known good drive, using a straight cable with only a single connector for a drive. I cut only 3 & 6, as those power the drive and/or are unused/ground by a standard floppy. The rest of the odd pin grounds I left. This was based on my impression that this particular model didn't use a media sense drive.

The system boots normally and doesn't give a 601 error, but cannot use the drive. All I get is a "Drive not Ready" dos error. The motor spins and the head seems to try to step, but that's it. Has anyone else done this and can point out where I may have gone wrong?
 
Didn't the old PS/2 have two inverted wires in the floppy connectors? In which case you'd need to find an IBM specific MFM floppy cable.
 
Yes, they did. The "normal" twist other systems are used to is missingand pins 10 & 14 are reserved or altered, thus there is only one drive possible at ds1. I'd keep on trying with another single drive I could jumper, but I don't have a working drive like that anymore and the dual 3.5/5.25 (working) junker I just tested it on did the same thing when I jumpered it. I'm beginning how different those old ps/2 floppy drives are from the "usual", so maybe time to start looking for another drive.
 
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