PC Floppy Drive help
4 posts, 3 voices
Matt Price (2343)
71 posts
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Help! I’ve picked up a 2005 Sony MPF920 (https://docs.sony.com/release//MPF920Z.pdf) for free. With the straight, standard Acorn floppy cable in the correct orientation, RISC OS (any version from 3.70, 5.20, 6.20 etc) will not detect the drive. Put the cable in “upside down” and the drive is detected, but the old light on all the time occurs and you cannot access this. There is no jumper to change the drive 0/1 setting. Is there anything that can be done, or is it save up £40 for a new drive from CJE? Cheers, Matt |
Steve Pampling (1551)
8172 posts
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That’s one difference, but I believe the modern drives also use a controller that won’t do what the RO format requires.
Probably, unless you could find a nice old scrap PC with the right style of drive. |
Rick Murray (539)
13851 posts
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The “light on all the time” means the cable is connected upside down.
There usually is, just on this drive you have to hunt for it. Details here, and hope you don’t have one of the naff drives: http://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/last/drive-mod/main.htm
USB, yes, because the internal controller actually reads the disc itself. A floppy drive is supposed to be a dumb device, concerned with reading and writing from the disc, leaving it to the host to make sense of the data… Here’s another link that may be of use: http://www.apdl.org.uk/riscworld/volumes/volume2/issue6/floppy/index.htm |
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Matt Price (2343)
71 posts
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Got cheesed off with it and paid CJE £30 for a re-conditioned S/H drive. After buying every cable under the sun, it still won’t work. It also appears that the blank pin is in the incorrect place as Sony manufactured some drives in 2005 (which mine is) for Compaq. Compaq wanted a unique cable, so the pin out was moved from the third on the top row to the second along with the associated wiring on the drive. Can’t even be used on a normal PC, and I have tried it. Pretty crap to be honest. |
