Pin settings on an old floppy drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Scruffy Eagle
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Scruffy Eagle

Hi!

I did a search via Google - didn't find what I needed. Scanned the message
titles here, the same. Here's my problem:

I'm trying to rehab a HP 6360 machine to set up a copy of Woody Linux. It
isn't going very well, and the prompts advise me to send a copy of the
output as a bug report. However, I don't have any easy way of getting that
log out of the HP & onto the internet. The system I'm working with has
always had problems w/ the floppy drive it came with. I'd always figured it
was a software glitch in HP custom programming of the OS. However, setting
up Linux, the same problem occurs with the floppy drive - it doesn't
recognize the presence of disks, about 4/5 of the time - and, even when it
does, it frequently can't read or write the disks. This makes me think it's
a faulty drive, not faulty software. I dragged out an old floppy drive I'd
had tucked away, and removed it from the little rack I'd installed it onto
for usage in the old Frankenstein PC I used to monkey with years ago (long
story, there,...). My uncertainty re. using that old floppy drive in the HP
6360, is that I think I'd tracked down pin settings info way back when, to
make it work, & reset the placement of the jumpers on the pins so it would
be the 1.44 MB "A" drive w/ a 1.2 MB "B" drive on the same cable. Here,
years later, the Frankenstein system I'd used it with is long gone. The info
I tracked down is either long gone also, or hopelessly buried somewhere in a
stack of miscellaneous papers in a hastily-stuffed moving box.

The info on tags on the underside of the floppy drive is this:

*) There's a white label that says,
9307
/A21

*) There's a bar-code label which says,
UFD1526069

*) There's another bar-code label which says,
8790194

The jumpers on the pins are currently set as:

1 1
*--* *
* * *
|
* * *
* * *
* *--*
5 15

To try to make that clear, on the board near the pins set, one end is
labelled with the number "1" at both left & right corners. At the other end
of the pin set, there's the number "5" at left corner and "15" at right
corner. (This wasn't a mistake - if you look at the underside of the board,
it's labelled exactly the same there.) If you take my little diagram and
count it as pin 1 is top left corner, pin 5 bottom left corner, pin 11 as
top right corner, and pin 15 bottom right corner, the jumpers are currently
set to connect pin 1 w/ pin 6, pin 12 w/ pin 13, and pin 10 w/ pin 15.

In my brief search re. this, I did find a couple of references to IBM PC's -
so, it's a fair bet that this old floppy drive came out of an IBM PC or
(more likely) AT.

I intend to use the old drive w/ the single-connection cable that was in the
HP 6360, as a solo floppy drive; no "B" drive. (I don't have any other
cables hanging around any more,...) Before I go hookiing it up, plugging it
in, and seeing what happens, I'm hoping that I can find some help knowing
whether the current jumpers settings are acceptable - and, if not, exactly
how should I change them?

Can anybody help me with this?

Thanks in advance, if you can!


Scruffy Eagle
http://scruffyeagle.com
email _me @ scruffyeagle.com
(To use address, remove "_me" and spaces.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Feminism, Pedophilia, & Homosexuality - these
aren't 'lifestyle choices'. They're contagious social
diseases; psychiatric illnesses; disfunctions of the
reproductive systems. If left unchecked and
untreated, they result in conflict and suffering.
If condoned and promoted, they constitute a
mortal threat to the survival of civilization."
--- Storm Crow ---

============================
 
Before I go hookiing it up, plugging it
in, and seeing what happens, I'm hoping that I can find some help
knowing whether the current jumpers settings are acceptable - and, if
not, exactly how should I change them?

Can anybody help me with this?

Thanks in advance, if you can!

FWIW - I've never had to change jumpers on a FDD, no matter the A-B B-A
or single config. They aren't like hard disks.
 
Peder said:
FWIW - I've never had to change jumpers on a FDD, no matter the A-B B-A
or single config. They aren't like hard disks.
=====================================

Hi, Peder!

Thanks for responding! I think I had to adjust the pins, but it was about
8(+?) years ago, so I'm not entirely sure any more. You see, I used to live
in the northern suburbs of Chicago, and each Spring the communities would
have what they called, "Spring Clean Up". To the normal people, this was
known as, "Junk Days". Everyone would throw anything they didn't want out to
the curb, and city crews would go around with trucks to pick it all up.
Anyone who saw something on a curb that they wanted, was free to take it
home (less work needed for the city crews to do). This led me to develop a
hobby of PC rehabbing. I'd take old junk PC's, scavenge them for parts, do
whatever reprogramming was needed to turn the stuff into working systems,
and then give them away to anyone I knew in need of a computer. I think the
floppy drive I'm inquiring info for was being linked to a card that allowed
the 1.44 MB drive to be used on a IBM PC motherboard. (Using 1.2 MB was also
beyond the motherboard's original capacity.)

I guess I could just plug it in, in the HP 6360 - turn it on, and see what
happens,... (BZZZT!!! ?) However, I'd feel more confident proceeding, if I
could at least know for sure how the pins are supposed to be jumpered when
the 1.44 MB floppy drive is being used as a master w/o slave. I'm hoping
someone can turn me on to where I can find that info, or perhaps simply know
it themselves and clue me in.

Scruffy Eagle
http://scruffyeagle.com
email _me @ scruffyeagle.com
(To use address, remove "_me" and spaces.)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"Feminism, Pedophilia, & Homosexuality - these
aren't 'lifestyle choices'. They're contagious social
diseases; psychiatric illnesses; disfunctions of the
reproductive systems. If left unchecked and
untreated, they result in conflict and suffering.
If condoned and promoted, they constitute a
mortal threat to the survival of civilization."
--- Storm Crow ---

============================
 
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