Mitsubishi VX-20 Floppy Drive Help

[ltkettch17]

Hey all,

We have a problem with one of our VX-20 sinker edms. This machine is in pretty rough shape, but the only reason we can't get it going now is pretty silly.

We load all our programs into the machine with a floppy disk. I was able to load all the machine software and E-paks with the Mits disks. However, when I use one of our transfer disks, the machine won't read the disk. I can use the same disk in our other 2 VX's, but the third machine just wont read.

Mits says that the floppy drive is bad; but if it's bad, why would it read the disks for the machine software, E-Packs and Pitch Adjustment?

Any ideas?

Thanks all.

[Shoes]

The drive reads the factory disk in the cp/m (japan) format. Your programs are probably dos format. It sounds like the dos part of the drive is going bad. There not cheap. That drive is a Mits only item. You could try a cleaning disk. If its not the drive its the i/o board. Hope this helps.

[ltkettch17]

Yeah, this is the same thing that Mits is saying.

Looks like it will be a $700 fix. When this happened at my last shop (with Charmilles) this was a $20 fix that we could get at Best Buy.

What my bosses should really do is buy a new machine...
But it's way more fun to fix goofy problems on a 15year old machine.

Thanks Shoes, glad I'm not the only one who has experienced this.