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Western Europe Wanted: 8" Floppy drive

Covers: Germany, France, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Monaco and Liechtenstein
B

braids

Member
Joined
Nov 12, 2010
Messages
44
Hi all,
I'm searching for a 8" floppy drive to build up reformatting capability for RX01/RX02 diskettes with erased track 1, e.g. a shugart SA-801 or SA-851

Best Thanks, Braids
 
Hi,

From the prices I've seen, it's sometimes cheaper to just buy a "as is" computer with an 8" drive online and pull the FDD.


.
 
Yeah, from what I have seen, it may be easier to buy a multi-drive enclosure or computer with them inside. Over the past year, I have seen a few dozen of the standard 801s or other Shugart/IBM styled drives, but only one standalone DEC drive and it was rather expensive, like $600 USD if I remember correctly.
 
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Hi,

I search for a standard drive because of that dec RX01/02 drive aren't capable to formatting disks. They need clean IBM3740 77x26x128 format. I have a bunch of diskettes with erased tracks and lost formatting because of a computer that have try to read/boot disks with the erase oscillator on. The only that the RX02 can do is to change FM into MFM. When i use a standard drive with a PC or e.g. a tandy CoCo2 with a modified controller (switch on the FM/MFM pin of the WD1773) and a special program then i can try to save these disks and bring them back to use. The data are anyhow lost. When i can get a computer that can do this with not too many expense to transport that would be great.

Thank You, Braids
 
I didn't realize until I re-read the first post. I do happen to have an SA-801, but I have not yet been able to actually get it reading and writing discs. It may just be a bad drive.

Luckily, SA-801s seem to be the most common 8" drives I see on eBay. Maybe it's just because I am on mobile, but I am not seeing what country you are in, but I have seen both 120V 60Hz drives and 230V 50Hz drives, both new and used.

Your best bet would be to make a saved search on ebay for "Shugart" or "8 inch" in the vintage computers category, as doing so will tell you every time someone lists a shugart drive or an 8 inch drive. I would make the searches more specific, but a lot of people fail to include specific model numbers. This is how I just scored an 8" drive from a Fairlight CMI a few days ago.

Make sure that your saved search is also worldwide, because if not it will probably filter out the results from the USA, where I have seen most of the drives. I am sure that you are able to work something out with a seller to ship internationally if you give them a good enough reason (like paying a bunch for shipping :p)

Last thing, make sure to keep the index hole in mind. I am not familiar enough with RX discs to know where the index hole is, but I do know from my SA-801 that in the case of the IBM format, most of the discs I have will not read in the SA-801 as the hole is in the wrong place.
 
Pickelhaube808 said:
I didn't realize until I re-read the first post. I do happen to have an SA-801, but I have not yet been able to actually get it reading and writing discs. It may just be a bad drive.

Luckily, SA-801s seem to be the most common 8" drives I see on eBay. Maybe it's just because I am on mobile, but I am not seeing what country you are in, but I have seen both 120V 60Hz drives and 230V 50Hz drives, both new and used.

Your best bet would be to make a saved search on ebay for "Shugart" or "8 inch" in the vintage computers category, as doing so will tell you every time someone lists a shugart drive or an 8 inch drive. I would make the searches more specific, but a lot of people fail to include specific model numbers. This is how I just scored an 8" drive from a Fairlight CMI a few days ago.

Make sure that your saved search is also worldwide, because if not it will probably filter out the results from the USA, where I have seen most of the drives. I am sure that you are able to work something out with a seller to ship internationally if you give them a good enough reason (like paying a bunch for shipping :p)

Last thing, make sure to keep the index hole in mind. I am not familiar enough with RX discs to know where the index hole is, but I do know from my SA-801 that in the case of the IBM format, most of the discs I have will not read in the SA-801 as the hole is in the wrong place.
Click to expand...
If the index hole is in the wrong place you are trying to read a double sided disk in a single sided drive. The 85x has two index sensors to handle both. The 80x only has one. But if one only intend to format 3740 format (for use in a RX0x drive) then a Shugart 801 should be fine. One thing to remember is that not all floppy controllers is able to handle FM encoding and 250 kbit/s data rate. Check this page for more info http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/img/index.htm

I MIGHT have a a 50 Hz Shugart 801 available and I am in Sweden so shipping wouldn't be that extremely expensive compared to from the US, but it will be another couple months until I get there and can check. Then I need to test if it works.

On the other hand Shugart 801 do turn up on Ebay in Europe as well form time to time.
 
MattisLind said:
If the index hole is in the wrong place you are trying to read a double sided disk in a single sided drive.
Click to expand...
I now own three 8" drives and nearly 100 disks and I just learn this now, haha. I was under the impression that different formats had different index holes (like how my Tandy disk would read with the Shugart, but not my IBM disks), but this makes sense now.

Well, at least that Shugart only cost me $37.
 
Pickelhaube808 said:
I now own three 8" drives and nearly 100 disks and I just learn this now, haha. I was under the impression that different formats had different index holes (like how my Tandy disk would read with the Shugart, but not my IBM disks), but this makes sense now.

Well, at least that Shugart only cost me $37.
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Getting *any* 8" drive for $37 is an unbelievable screaming deal these days, you should thank your lucky stars
 
maxtherabbit said:
Getting *any* 8" drive for $37 is an unbelievable screaming deal these days, you should thank your lucky stars
Click to expand...
The things you find scanning ebay a few times every day at work... All of my 8" media has been gotten for less than or equal to $1 per disk this way, and I just picked up an assortment of 7 different 5.25" and 3.5" drives for $6 a piece last week.

The savings do however cancel themselves out when you take into account buying stuff like a brand new Tandon TM848-2E... Not something I regret though because it is a beautiful drive. Still making the external enclosure for it :)
 
Not helpful at all, but clearly there are good deals to have in Western Europe. I purchased a pair of PDP11 compatible 8 inch drives in an enclosure about 6 months ago from France.
 
Hi all,
I've purchased a Shugart SA801. I will look on which machine i will install that drive. My favourite is the CoCo2 (WD1773, i shall mod the controller) or a pc if i find a proper controller, if i find not than i take a pic18 and mikrobasic. It's just for formatting disk and making debugging disks. Will be continued on an othes genre.


Thank you, Braids
 
bolex said:
Not helpful at all, but clearly there are good deals to have in Western Europe. I purchased a pair of PDP11 compatible 8 inch drives in an enclosure about 6 months ago from France.
Click to expand...
DC motors on them ? If not, what do you about the EU drives being 50Hz rather than US spec 60Hz ?
 
zippysticks said:
DC motors on them ? If not, what do you about the EU drives being 50Hz rather than US spec 60Hz ?
Click to expand...
I was thinking the same things when I first looked at them, but these were rated for 60hz. These seem to have come out of a data center and I was wondering if converting entire data centers to 60hz was ever a thing.
 
bolex said:
but these were rated for 60hz
Click to expand...
And just to clarify, the power supply for these was 60hz in the enclosure, but the drives were MITSUBISHI M2896-63 droves. so they're just +24 and +5.
 
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