2nd TEAC

Hitachi
Possibly AKA Hitachi / IBM 5.25 Floppy Disk Drive 1.2mb PN 61x4618
copied from an old add...
Vintage IBM 5.25" Floppy Disk Drive - P/N 61X4618 - Type: HFD516CI

Toshiba

Toshiba 6782 5.25", Double Sided, High Density 1.2 MB Half-height drive

and finally the YE-DATA

Appologies the first one is TEC FB501 ...not TEAC.

I must have read it wrong..
my old eyes are not as good as they once were

from my web digging it looks like the TEC FB501 is single sided ..ie one head only..
used in the Kaypro or possibly C64 ?
It looks to be in good order physically...but not a 360k double sided.
I'll keep digging.

Not looking great for the Hitachi either..
pickins are slim
..but found a small reference that said..
Hitachi
HFD505 360K
HFD516 1.2M

so looks like the HFD516 is 80 TPI not 40.
Doh!!

TEC is obviously not 360k due to having one head. TEAC F is an uncommon QD drive, not even IBM PC standard (but those can sometimes fetch a good price if you don't need it). Toshiba and Hitachi are a bit of mystery to me, I've not dealt much with JP 5.25" drives so I don't know. But '88 is kinda late for a DD drive. But might be a late production, you'd need to test how it steps to be sure.
YD is from 1995, can't possibly be a DD drive. That'd be a pricey collectors item if it was. Quite an interesting drive anyway with that plastic cover, I've never seen that.

For 360k drive you want to get TEAC 55B or perferably the newer BR. These are good and quite easy to service drives. BTW - TPI stands for tracks per inch and for PC it's either 48 (40 tracks) or 96 (80 tracks).

Great info Deunan...
Looks like I'm gonna be unlucky with this batch of drives..
Good job they were a gift.
I'll keep digging anyhoo...just so I can identfy what I have as much as possible.
This era for drives is a minefield ..and navigating it aint easy so the more info I have the better.
rgds
VS

Deunan wrote on 2025-10-01, 21:22:

TEAC F is an uncommon QD drive, not even IBM PC standard (but those can sometimes fetch a good price if you don't need it).

As far as I know, 5.25" QD is actually DD with 96 instead of 48 tpi. If those drives rotate at 300rpm, they are electrically compatible with 3.5" DD drives (720KB), and should work perfectly with DSDD media. If you configure them as 3.5" DD, they should work perfectly in a PC.

Drives with one head are single-sided, not common in PC.

Use ImageDisk to test the drive, step to track 39 - if near the inner end of the head slot, it's a 40-track DD (360k) drive.
If near the center, it's an 80 track drive - likely HD (1.2M) - but do note that the TEAC 55F is unusual in the PC world,
it's an 80 track DD drive (720k).

You can also use ImageDisk to try formatting/writing/reading the various possible formats to
confirm exactly what the drive can do.

ImageDisk help has some reasonable detailed descriptions of the various drive types.

TEAC55B drives are indeed rarities these days...and as I found out command a very high premium.
So went searching for alternatives Tested and working.
I WILL have my 360K drive...🤣
I made an offer to Tau Ceti an ebay seller in the UK...which was accepted.
A Panasonic JU-455-7AAG.
So added it to this thread for reference...
If I manage to get any of the other drives I have working...I'll add them as well.
centralised reference to 5 1/4 drives isn't a thing so hopefully this thread will go some way to rectify this.
Please add pictures ...brands and model numbers etc to this thread.
Every little helps as the old lady said p1zzing in the sea.
rgds
VS

JU-455-5 has a service manual available, so -7 is probably not far off and just a refresh/cheaper to make. In general it looks like the 455-X is a successor to 455/465 model, which in turn is most likely a clone or licenced copy of Shugart Associates SA455 based on the namig scheme. Quite old but successful design, one of the first half-height 5.25" drives. Both -5 and -7 should have much newer and more integrated electronics, and it looks like Panasonic is just branding these and it was Matsushita that actually manufactured them.

As for using QD drive in a PC, that is possible but I figured the main reason OP wants a true 360k drive is to be able to both read and write such floppies. DD tracks written by a 96TPI drive can usually only be reliably read by another 96TPI drive, and not the original 48TPI ones. Also, while you can format a 720k disk, it will still be a 5.25" one. So you can neither use true 720k 3.5" floppies, nor transfer the ones you've made between DOS machines without extra work required to access them. That's a very interesting "hack" and I would play with it a bit (a lot actually), but it has little practical use for most people.