Did IBM ever use Mitsubishi M4851 floppy drives?

[wrljet]

I have an IBM XT 5160 that came with two of these Mitsubishi M4851 floppy drives.
They have a 1985 date on the serial number stickers.

They have an unusual "door" that I had not seen before.

Most ICs on my motherboard have 1984 date codes. All pre-1985.

Wondering if these drives could be original.



Bill

 

[jafir]

Not that I'm aware of. All of the half-height drives that I've seen have been YE-DATA, the same drives that were in the 5170, but with black faceplates. I think most I've seen have been from 1986.

I'll bet, as early as it is, that it came with a full height drive and an HDD, and someone wanted two floppies, so they swapped to aftermarket half height drives. I've got a 5150 that had a half height drive added to it.

 

[wrljet]

That's kinda what I figured. But they did it pretty early on.

OK, I'll replace these two with the one original in IBM packaging 360K drive I have in stock.

 

[jafir]

If you're going for originality, that is certainly something you could do, but as you say it would have happened early on, so to me it seems like a period correct change. I've got two 5150, one that has two full height floppies, and one that was upgraded at some point with a half height HDD and a half height second floppy, and I'll probably leave it, just to show how things started and where they often ended up.

 

[wrljet]

I went through some agony to get a working MFM controller and ST-225 playing in there. No reason to keep the *wrong* floppy drives.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've got one of these (or maybe 2) and I can't even begin to tell you where they came from. Probably Haltek specials (You remember Haltek in Mountain View, right?)

 

[wrljet]

I do remember them, yes.