Included tags: floppy drives ×
Excluded tags: None

Hardware • Another TC-01 back to life

Tatung Forum about 2 months ago

I thought I should say hello after lurking for a while.I bought a twin drive TC-01 (is that a TC-02?) while visiting family in the UK last year. It had the usual "blank display, no alpha-lock" symptoms, so having waited for it to be shipped back home to …

Moving files around.

VCFed about 2 months ago

Just wondering what different people do to move files around with old PCs... Without USB, it's kind of difficult and laplink won't talk to any modern machines. I've been using a ZIP drive, with a parallel port interface, and floppies to lo …

Floppy drive alignment tool?

VCFed about 2 months ago

I was watching Adrian's Basement, and he used a tool that looks like it's helpful in aligning and tuning floppy drives. It set recording levels for the write head, speed checks, etc. Does anyone know what this tool is and/or has an image I can …

Atari 1050 drive "Boot Error"

VCFed about 2 months ago

Hi all Now that I made my cable I've got the next issue: One of the floppy drives I'm restoring does everything these drives do, but only results in continuous "BOOT ERROR" when trying to boot a DOS disk. I checked and did everything …

Kaypro XT Toshiba drives having intermittent faults and not working

VCFed about 2 months ago

I have a kaypro XT with two toshiba floppy drives (see photo for label) i can find no documentation for them. the main issue is that both will intermittently not work, both at the same time i think?. when they do work drive A will read the directory but …

Compaq Portable Diskette Error?

VCFed about 2 months ago

Heyo, Booting my Compaq Portable gives me an error that states, “Diskette Error, replace and strike any key when ready”. I’ve tested both floppy drives in a 486 (with ImageDisk) and they both work fine. What’s odd to me is that the error still appe …

Looking for FDC timing chip or substitute for TRS-80 model 4 Gate Array

VCFed about 3 months ago

I'm in the processes of restoring a TRS-80 model 4 gate array and have located one of the problems causing the system to hang at startup and only show garbage on the screen. The FDC timing chips is dead and sends a hold signal to the CPU which was also bad …

Full Height 360k floppy drive terminators

VCFed about 3 months ago

Hello again all, I currently have some Magnetic Peripheral Inc (MPI) 360k DSDD full height 5.25" floppy drives on the bench and they are in need of some help. Two are missing their drive latches (3D printing to the rescue), but I've noticed that of t …

cdos, Cromix and ram

VCFed about 3 months ago

My journey with my IMSAI/Cromemco beast continues. I have recently aquired a 16FDC and some double sided shugart 850 floppy drives. I got tempted to try Cromix and quickly realized it wants more than 64K of ram. Out all of the ram cards I have bought proba …

TRS-80 Model 3 - (no floppy drives on system - 16K) Strange boot screen

VCFed about 3 months ago

I just repaired a TRS-80 Model 3 that I bought on OFFERUP, that was delivered with a broken CRT. I installed a new CRT, and things seemed to be fine, expect it boots up with a strange screen that I can not find anywhere on the internet. Really, I have lo …

Molybdenum Disufide lubricant.

VCFed about 3 months ago

From time-to-time a question/issue comes up about lubricating components of floppy drives. Also, there are plenty of Tube vids on the subject, e.g., I am wondering about MoS2 lubricants. I read about superior temperature stability, resistance to w …

Complete Philips P330 System [Clean]

VCFed about 3 months ago

Moving Sale -- I'll be listing a few other mini's and peripherals over the next few weeks/months. Complete Philips P330 System, including the following: - Main system unit, 4 8" Floppy Drives, CRT Display - Manuals library - Software on 8" Flopp …

Amazingly found a computer shop today still stocking floppy drives.

VCFed about 3 months ago

A friend told me of a small corner shop nearby today that still sold old computer parts. Given the last of the salvage places disappeared over a decade ago ( nearly 2 decades ago ) I was sceptical, but asked if he went by again, to find me a nice 5.25&quo …

Can I use 2 Winchester controller cards to add a third floppy to my 486 computer

VCFed about 3 months ago

I have a 486DX Micro Q (?) desktop computer that has a Maxtor HD and a 5 1/4" TEAC 1.2 MB drive and a 3 1/2" floppy drive. It is running DOS 5.0 and has 5 ISA slots available. I cannot find any markings on the current controller card as to the …

Does anyone know where I can Find restore CD images for my late 90's P3 Dell Latitude CPX-J laptop?

VCFed about 4 months ago

My pentium /// 550mhz Dell Latitude laptop is getting long in the tooth. I have been running linux on it for years now but its not really to useful for that anymore either. I was using it for ADTPro disk transfers for Apple II systems but honestly my HP mo …

Grid Gridcase 1520 floppy drive!

VCFed about 4 months ago

Hi Everyone I've got a Gridcase 286 laptop and both the hard drive and the FDD are faulty. It's a really cool design machine but they've essentially integrated fairly standard looking IDE and floppy drives directly onto a flat riser board with no cables b …

Clone XT cannot format floppy - Driving me insane

VCFed about 4 months ago

Hi everyone! I'm running into a problem that I just cant seem to wrap my head around it. I have an IBM XT Clone machine with a mainboard very similar to this one (photo from minuszerodegrees website). I have a 360K 5 1/4 floppy drive connected to a GW202 …

Tandy 1000 model 25-1002

VCFed about 4 months ago

Just found this forum while looking for solutions to get my Tandy running again. I have a 25-1002 also (s#831). My stepfather gave it to me back in '87 and I upgraded a bunch of things on it back then. I used it regularly all the way into the mid-late 90s. …

Guidance needed for setting up floppy drives for my XT

VCFed about 4 months ago

While waiting for my barebones 5160 XT system to arrive by mail (as described here), I've started planning which storage devices to use for it. I've looked through several threads here, as well as many pages on minuszerodegrees, but I would really apprecia …

For Trade of for sale TRS 80 Model 4D

VCFed about 5 months ago

I have a fully functional TRS 80 Model 4D (well it turns on and boots in dos but the top floppy drive won’t close. I don’t know why maybe it’s simple I’ve never opened it up) I don’t have enough room for it so if your near the Central Florida are …

Floppy drive head repair hints please

VCFed about 5 months ago

I am new to retro computers so please bear with me. In the past years I collected two 5.25" floppy drives from office cleanups. Both of them are Panasonic/Matsushita JU-475-4 (one was HP re-branded with a yellow LED). Now I am trying to add one of …

Compaq 386 - floppy drive and GOTEK woes

VCFed about 6 months ago

Hi All I've got a bunch of Compaq Portable III and 386 machines which I am trying to make usable again. It seems that the III was a 286 which tended to come with 5.25" floppy drives and a hard disk. The 386 came later with a bigger hard disk and usua …

IBM XT286 with IDE and CF-Card problems

VCFed about 6 months ago

Hello, After in my old IBM XT286 (with the original BIOS from 04/21/86) the original MFM hard drive crashed, I replaced the original IBM Fixed Disk and Disk Drive Adapter with an M51505 A4 Mini Super IDE controller with a 256MB CF card. The floppy drives …

Single-sided 250kb 3.5" Floppy Drives.

VCFed about 6 months ago

This may not belong here as I don't think IBM compatibles ever supported them - too early (or simply not considered), even for the original PC? But I hope to clear up the origin. I have encountered 2x single-head, what appear to be 67.5TPI 250kb floppy dr …

Need a Sirius/Victor boot floppy written

VCFed about 6 months ago

I came into ownership of a Victor 9000 system and I'm still in the process of cleaning it up. It had what looks to be a copy of Kermit and another random floppy in the drive and I have not yet actually done testing yet to verify if these disks are any good …