What floppy drives can you use with a Falcon?

[unseenmenace]

Does anyone know any makes and models of high density floppy drives that will work in a Falcon?

[030falcon030]

I think you can use a LS 120. Someone told me you can.

[Greenious]

LS-120 connects to IDE if I'm not mistaken. And afaik, yes you can connect one to F030, atleast I distinctly remember seeing it supported in HDDriver...

Anyway... apart from IDE connected peripherals...

You can connect any pc floppy to F030. Although not everyone will work 100% right out of the box.

The problem is HD-floppy detect signal. Without it the floppy will always work as a 720kb driver, or 1.44mb drive.

F030 expects it on pin 2 I believe, and most floppys doesn't provide that signal on pin 2, (some provide it on pin 4, or pin 6) if they provide it at all...

Some time ago I found a pdf file covering a lot of floppys, and their jumpersettings. In your quest to find a suitable floppy disk drive I think you'll find it very useful. I'll include it as an attachment to this message, if it works this time.

Modern floppys often lacks jumpers, atleast visible ones. Sometimes they are hardwired from the factory, sometimes they are hidden under the shielding, so you have to take the floppy apart to move the jumpers around.

But a short list of floppys that should be compatible with F030 (atleast if you jumper them correctly):

TEAC FD235HF-6573
TEAC FD235HF-4473
Y-E DATA YD-702D-6537D
Y-E DATA YD-702D-6037D
Y-E DATA YD-702B-6039B
Y-E DATA YD-702B-6037B
EPSON SMD 1340 P-031
MITSUMI D359T3 (Not sure this one do hd-detect on pin2, and most Mitsumi D359xxx drives are hardwired to do no hd-detect from factory)
SONY MPF 420-1
SONY MP-F17W-82D
SONY MP-F17W-84
SONY MP-F17W-85
PANASONIC JU-257A-294P
PANASONIC JU-257A-84P
PANASONIC JU-257A-104P
PANASONIC JU-257A-293P
PANASONIC JU-257A-083P
PANASONIC JU-257A-083PJ
PANASONIC JU-257A-103P
PANASONIC JU-257A-103PJ
PANASONIC JU-257A-081P
PANASONIC JU-257A-101P
MITSUBISHI MF-355C-58ML
MITSUBISHI MF-355C-58MF

EPSON SMD1040 should be usable, but doesn't output on pin 2, so you'll have to move around the wires on the floppy cable.

Many have similar modelnames, and you'd think that, for example, all PANASONIC JU-257A-xxx is usable, unfortunately, that is not the case. So check out the drive carefully before you start. The same goes for SONY MP-F17W and Teac FD235 and the others.

Oh, and one last thing... F030 and ST/STE/TT uses the very same floppyinterface, so any drive working with a F030, should work for the others and vice versa.

[unseenmenace]

Cheers greenious, anyone know if an LS-120 will be assigned as drive A:? i.e. will it boot off of it or would I still need a normal floppy drive for booting off floppy?

[karlm]

unseen : the ls120 will most likely come up as a 'C:' drive on the Falcon, because for all intents and purposes the Falcon sees it as a hard disk.

Greenious - you still need to make the floppy drive '0' not '1' like a lot of pc drives are jumpered to be, right!?

Cheers

karlm

[Greenious]

Greenious - you still need to make the floppy drive '0' not '1' like a lot of pc drives are jumpered to be, right!?

Right.

[jens]

Just want to link to a similar thread in the ST hardware section:
Click here.
Unnecessary to write everything twice...