Sharp PC-7100 \ VOGONS

Sharp PC-7100

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First post, by 8088

Posted on 2018-11-04, 10:26

8088 Offline

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Hi, I recently got a sharp pc7100 and having problems with the FDD. It was unable to boot of a disk (and the HDD is not working but worry about that later) so I stripped it down and funnily enough I found out the fdd wasn't even plugged into the motherboard. I still decided to remove the FDD pull it apart and give it a lube and clean. I tried the drive in another machine I have and it worked perfectly.

So I reassembled the fdd and put it back into the Sharp PC and was going to use a standard PC fdd data cable. Still getting an error trying to boot (Drive error) so now i'm wondering if the controller on the board is dead or if Sharp used a non standard cable to connect it to the motherboard? So if anyone has a manual with pinouts from the mobo that would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

tl;dr Does anyone have a manual for the Sharp PC 7100 or know the pinouts to the fdd?

Reply 1 of 3, by chinny22

Posted on 2018-11-06, 11:16

chinny22 Offline

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I'm not familiar with the PC but is the correct type set in BIOS?

The fact that it works in another PC is a good sign, can you test using that PC's cable in the sharp? maybe its the floppy cable thats bad.

Reply 2 of 3, by 8088

Posted on 2018-11-07, 10:29

8088 Offline

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Joined: 2018-11-04, 10:19

Thanks for your reply chinny. When I tested the fdd in the other computer I used the same cable as what I tried in the sharp pc. To make things more confusing, I pulled it apart again because the hdd in the sharp looked similar to a hardcard isa hdd (microfile) so plugged it into an XT (v20) i have and surprisingly it booted straight up of the hdd card. Having thought the physical movement of the card freed up the heads I put the card back into the sharp pc and once again it wouldn't work.

Not really to sure where to go from here... Could be a power supply problem but when I measured the voltages at the fdd power cable it was +12 and +5 like you'd expect. I did this with nothing else plugged in though so might retest it with a load on it.

And as far as the bios goes theres no real fdd or hdd setup. I assume its got some sort of self config or something... I don't think I ever specified what type of mfm hdd was on old computers I've used...

Cheers

Reply 3 of 3, by 8088

Posted on 2018-11-13, 11:34

8088 Offline

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Joined: 2018-11-04, 10:19

If anyone stumbles across this from a google search in the future, I ended up getting this to work. I pulled the drive out and set the drive select to 1 and used a flat cable to connect it to the mainboard and presto, it works beautifully!

Cheers

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