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
scuzz
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