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ScuzzBlog: Diaries June 2017

Entry 30th June 2017: Post: 1


Not a Playstation then


Hi

I DID IT !!!!! I BLOODY DID IT !!!!! AMAZING !!

I had this old Mitsubishi MF504C-310MP drive that had a cracked fascia 
that was damaged by the postal folk. I had thought of trying to use on 
the A3000UX in some far flung reaches of the future. So I trawled the 
web and found some details on the drive and noted that to use with a 
3.5" floppy I would need to remove the Terminator Resistor Pack. This is 
an inch long blue thing with 9 metal pins. So I gently eased that out 
from the 5.25" drive and thought what the hell.. lets go for it.

I pressed the front fascia release button , which was a pig, and 
withdrew the metal casing from the IBM PS/1. I then simply plugged in 
the connector and then hunted round for some power. Eventually I located 
a spare power connector lurking deep below the hard drive. I could find 
no ground wire anywhere let alone something with a spade connector so I 
thought forget it.

Fired up the IBM and guess what, there in the file manager was now a 
drive b ... surely it couldn't be that easy. So I hot footed to the next 
room and got a suitable floppy and inserted and clicked the drive b icon 
and sure enough it said the disk wasn't formatted do I want to format.. 
Hell yes. Then unsuitable or broken disk... You gotta be kidding. I then 
cleared the 1.2mb setting and plugged in 360 and it formatted no 
problem. So I got another fresh new different make disk and this time 
was able to format at 1.2mb. I was on a roll.

So I quickly pinged out the front fascia and screwed the 5.25" in place 
and slid back the casing and sat the monitor on top and booted up. With 
my fresh formatted 5.25" I wrote a short message in the text editor and 
then saved to 5.25" floppy. Went into file manager and there was the 
file. Written and saved on a real 5.25" floppy disk drive. 2 in the 
morning here and I let out a deafening scream of 'YUS'. Man am I happy. 
I did it.. I bloody did it. I have a 3.1 machine able to write DOS disks .

I am so relieved and so happy. I just managed to put into place the last 
piece of a jigsaw that I have been trying to complete for years and 
years. You cannot believe how frustrated I've been not having a 5.25" 
drive that can create DOS disks. I'm so happy.

The PS/1 is an IBM 2133-111 386SX - 25MHz with 2MB RAM and 85MB hard 
drive and is now fitted with a Mitsubishi MF504C-310MP 5.25" disk drive 
and 3.5" IBM drive. So I can take the image that I downloaded off the 
web and transfer to 3.5" and then simply copy over to the 5.25" drive. 
How cool is that. Seriously, how cool is that. And sorry USB emulation 
running on an os emulator don't count cus I NEED THE FLOPPY DISK ... not 
a pretend disk.

I have like a two  foot high mountain here of 5.25" disks previously 
unread that are going to be closely scrutinised now. Sad thing is I have 
to go to bed. ...  bugga. Times like these I reflect on the words of 
Count Saknussem in Journey to the Centre of the Earth ' I don't sleep. I 
hate those little slices of death '. Jules Verne .. what a guy.... 
Carpathian Castle.. also a classic. Probably the only novels I actually 
read. Books without pictures never really grabbed my attention... Into 
the Abyss.. that's another.

Anyway if you want to see the workings of the humble PS/1 there is a 
YouTube video, as ever of a guy taking one apart. Most entertaining.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUPhanDoNTM

Just for interest this is a 5.25" informative video. My drive had 22 
different jumper settings. Fortunately I found the manual or I would 
never have got it working.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbxPW86B84E



...... or maybe Jules Verne is more interesting 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kglr99tOqvs

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Last updated 17:59 24/07/2017

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