Floppy disk drives

[Wjman]

Hi all,
We have 5 Hitachi wire EDMs, and due to them not being in a dust free environment have to replace the floppy disk drives occasionally, we use these to download the programs to, however my boss said that we are being charged £400 a time for a replacement. This is a "rip off" as a conventional FD drive costs about 10 to 15 pounds. I know the Hitachi machine uses an OS different to most makes of machines but surely it can't be that different that we cannot use a "Normal" FD drive as a replacement. Any help or suggestions appreciated.

Mark...

[wms]

Wjman,
Why not buy a floppy and give it a go. The worst that could happen is it won't work. Make sure when you install the floppy that you line up pin 1 on the drive with the red mark(pin 1) on the ribbon cable. And I would use a backup copy of my program as not to loss any data. By the way if you don't line up pin 1 it will mess up all the data on your disk. Been there, done that.

[Wjman]

WMS,
I did actually try a conventional FDD today, when I realised that we were being ripped off. But unfortunately it didn't work I noticed that the ribbon cable seems to fit upside down as well as right way up (theres a piece of the PCB snapped away). Needless to say it didn't work either way, one way it tries to access the FDD on startup (no joy), the other way when we try to access the FDD it says device not ready! It must be something to do with the way the Hitachi operating system works. By the way we made sure that jumper settings were the same on both FDD's all but one that we could not make as there was no where to connect it to.
Mark...

[wms]

Bummer!

[hardmill]

Why not just wire it up to your pc. RS232 or ethernet cable?
If not have somebody do it up for you. Pay once and
never deal with it again.
PEACE

[paulried]

I just love the "gottcha's" that these manufacturers put into systems. We have a CNC panel cutting machine from Italy. The monitor went on the fritz one day and they wanted $3000 for a 15" tube monitor!!! We almost gave in because to fit into the dust enclosure, you had to have special mounting hardware and just mount the tube (no plastic enclosure). While cursing them we stumbled upon a solution; a flat screen LCD monitor mounted on the outside face of the enclose. $399 and 4 allen screws later we had a replacement and it worked even better than the original since it cut the glare from the overhead lights.

That was 4 years ago and it still works like a charm.

Lesson... get mad, curse and get creative!

[HuFlungDung]

Originally posted by paulried Lesson... get mad, curse and get creative!

That's a good one Paul. Sig material even.

My wife gets mad when I curse but I just tell her the devil keeps interfering until he's gotten me to swear, then after that, things start to click. I'm conditioned like a lab rat

[Klox]

The drives that we uses in todays PC's is "plug and play". That means that the OS reads it easily and sets it up. On the Hitachi edms the stiffy drive is not dedicated as the A drive, this is why the machine will not "pick" it up. You need a stiffy drive that you can dedicate as a B or a D drive. I know that TEAC makes drives with "jumpers" you can dedicate as you need. I know these drives are very scarce these days to come by. Phone all the Computer shops maybe there is one lying around that needs you as the owner. In South Africa a new stiffy costs around R100-00, to replace the stiffy drive on my Hitachi, bying from the agents would be around R4800-00 !!!!!

I do have sympathy for you

Klox

[Scrit]

The same problem exists on older Biesse PTPs with CNI controllers. With exactly the same solution that Klox gave. Once again the TAC drive is one of the best options.

Scrit

[Wjman]

Scrit,
I have looked at the drive in question and it is a TEAC drive, from the outside it looks identical to a conventional FDD apart from, where the jumper switches are on the back, there seems to be an "extra bit of PCB with an additional jumper attached" I have contacted TEAC with the serial and part no, but they do not recognise it. They said it must be an OEM-Product of another producer. At the moment i'm stuffed! I should probably try what Klox says and try all my local sources, although I don't hold out much hope. Perhaps Hitachi bought all the FDDs to get a "captive audience"
Mark...

[wms]

Wjman,

Why don't you post the model number of the drive here and maybe the members could keep their eyes pealed for some.
And maybe some resourceful member could do a little research as well. The more eyes the better.

[Wjman]

Guys,
The drive is type FD-235HG-6338 TEAC (9826)M.
PN 193077A3-38. If anyone can find me a couple of replacements for a reasonable price I would be very grateful.
Thanks Mark...