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Tool For Floppy Drive

A

aesis

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
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Jesi,Italy
Hi guys,i do not know if it's the right section but I'll try...

Do you know a tool that is valid to observe the functionality of the Floppy Drive sector by sector?
I have an old Panasonic ju-253-043,long ago I replaced the heads with another old FFD of the same model and until now everything went smoothly..., then I set and tested the Floppy Drive with an old 386 that he had X-Copy.
Yesterday I inserted a NEW floppy formatted with win7 on CMD,I inserted the AVSCAN program inside,on the first PC XT worked very well but on the second XT where it has the floppy drive in question to the command DIR has listed all the files to the inside,but when I launched the AVSCAN.EXE file it gave me error reading the drive,cancel,retry,returns.
Is it possible to set up the Floppy Player?

If you have a program similar to X-COPY but run on Windows, do you know one?

Thanks for any response !!
 
Try Imagedisk 1.18, it is a very useful dos utility. You can also align your floppy drives with this tool if you know how to do it.
 
Please note, IMD is MS-DOS--not a "command prompt window" utility. You have to boot MS-DOS to use it--or shutdown Win9X to an MS-DOS prompt.
 
In fact I tried using CMD and it does not work,then I tried with dosbox 0.74 but even with that I managed...
 
Yes,I have to take an old PC and start it in ms-dos because with a win7 pc I think it's not possible to run it..
 
If you're just after aligning some disks, you can format up an MS-DOS system boot disk and include the IMD set on it. The program(s) aren't very large.
 
I aligned the heads and on a classic 720K blue floppy works great .., the problem is that it does not read a modern floppy NEW formatted at 720K with adhesive on the right side, I have tried 2 modern 1.44 floppy players and both read well floppy formatted at 720.
Strange because I have 1.44 formatted floppies at 720k a few years ago and reads them very well ...
I think my floppy drive Panasonic JU-253-073P is either faulty or can not read floppy formatted by other readers, is it normal for you?
Now I have 2 DD readers of another XT that I have and I test those, if the 2 letori I can read the NEW dual-format formatted floppies means that the Panasonic is faulty.
 
He always read HD floppy formatted in DD and in fact I have some HD formatted a few years ago in 720k and read them, I do not understand why I have 2 new Verbatim formatted in DD and does not see them, while they are seen and read to perfection by another pc-xt with a TEAC 720k reader.
Things are 2, I have the Panasonic JU-253 is faulty or I do not know why it does not recognize Verbatim floppies... :cry:
 
Let me see if I understand:

DS2D floppy formatted as 720K reads as 720K
DSHD floppy formatted as 720K does not read as 720K (unless the density aperture has been covered)
DS2D floppy formatted as 1.44M does not read (there is no HD hole).

Some early machines did not use "media sense" drives; that is, drives that use the density aperture in the floppy to determine mode, but rather use what the host controller says the density is (like 5.25" media). Most notorious for this were some IBM PS/2 models.

Have I summarized correctly?
 
I "think" the OP is using 1.44Mb floppy disks formatted as 720k, They work in XT #1 but not in XT #2 which has the Panasonic JU-253 drive in it.
 
Sort of on topic: 3.5" DD floppy drives are pretty scarce, so is there any reason why you can't replace a DD drive with an HD version (of course only for DD diskettes)?

Any mods required/recommended (pin 2, lock the density sense switch, etc.) ?

m
 
Malc said:
I "think" the OP is using 1.44Mb floppy disks formatted as 720k, They work in XT #1 but not in XT #2 which has the Panasonic JU-253 drive in it.
Click to expand...

Covering over the density aperture should cure that problem. 720K drives are blind to the aperture, so don't care if you use HD or 2D floppies.

Mike:

It depends on the drive and the application. Some systems require the "Drive Ready" signal, which not all HD have available, usually substituting the "DIsk Changed" signal on pin 34. However, some HD drives are very configurable, such as the Samsung SFD-321B. I've routinely modified those for 1.6MB operation with Ready on pin 34 and disk changed on pin 2 (some Japanese-made gear requires this).
 
Chuck(G) said:
Covering over the density aperture should cure that problem. 720K drives are blind to the aperture, so don't care if you use HD or 2D floppies.
Click to expand...
Yup it seems that has been done though, Post #9

@aesis What XT's do you have, IBM 5160 or Clones
 
You can't just swap parts in any floppy drive without aligning it afterwards. Floppy drives do not automatically center heads over the written tracks like some/most hard drives.

After swapping heads from one floppy drive to another, you must adjust the head alignment, and the index pulse timing. Otherwise, while you may be able to format, write and read a disk on that drive, another drive may not be able to use that disks and a disk that is written on another drive may get corrupted if you try writing on it with your repaired drive.

As floppy drives moved from 8" to 5.25" to 3.5" the manufacturers stopped building the drives so they could easily be serviced. Modern 3.5" drives don;t have test points to connect test equipment for alignment/servicing purposes like the 8" drive had. On the other hand, modern 3.5" and smaller floppy drives are much less expensive than the 8" floppy drive were, even though they are less reliable than the old 8" floppy drives.
 
I'll make an exception to that. Much to my surprise, I found that some of the floppy drives used in Brother word processors can adjust to wildly out-of-alignment disks. Upon further investigation, it turns out that the Brother has no track zero stop--just runs the carriage up to a mechanical stop, then steps out, 4 steps to a track, until it gets a good read. Makes for a slow floppy, but on a Wapro, who cares?

Some Brother WPs also colossally waste space--using only 120 or 240K on a single-sided 3.5" floppy. Group-coded FM of a sort.

I imagine that the design target was "cheap and tolerant as heck".
 
Chuck(G) said:
If you're just after aligning some disks, you can format up an MS-DOS system boot disk and include the IMD set on it.
Click to expand...

I've always used commercially-formatted disks (that I don't care about) as test/alignment disks, because I am assuming that a professional duplicator can create something more on-spec than my own drives. Is that a valid assumption? Or is that a bad idea, given that disks created 30 years ago might be worse than stuff I make myself?

I'd love to get my hands on a true calibration floppy, but every time I see one for sale, it's for silly prices.

I suppose one method for generating a known good floppy might be something like:
  1. Find a system
  2. Read an image of a commercial floppy on it
  3. If the image read 100% correctly, you can assume that drive is ok for formatting new floppies
Does that seem like a valid strategy?
 
No.

Just because you can read a disk does not mean that the drive you are using to read is in perfect alignment.

You need to be able to format, and write a disk, then move that disk over to another drive where you read and write on it, then put it back into the original drive and see if you can still read and write on it. Then put it back in the other drive, and if you can still read and write on it, then the drive in question is aligned good enough to work.

When I work on a drive, first I use a Teaco Drive Exerciser to make sure that I have control of the drive, and the write gate. If I have control of the drive from the Interface, it's safe for me in try inserting an alignment disk, and connect the drive to one of my Lynx Floppy Drive Analyzers. Then, I use the alignment disk to check and adjust the head alignment, index pulse timing, and check the head output signal. If the head alignment and index pulse timing are correct, then I can try connecting the drive to a computer to see if it will format, read and write. If the drive will boot, format, read, and write, then I can try interchanging with disks formatted on another drive.

Miss any part of the procedure, and the alignment disk could get wrecked, the Drive Analyzer could get damaged, or the drive might not work.
 
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