I found this Sony MP-F17W 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy Drive at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-3-5-034-Flopp … ?orig_cvip=true, where the physical layout of the drive looks very similar according to the diskette jumpers manual.

I therefore bought the drive very cheaply and did the swap. Other parts that I swapped are the bottom inner metal plate inside the drive that holds the little white button as this differs slightly, and also the top cover as the other was a little bent at one corner and full of stickers.

Conversion complete.

Over 18 months since I bought a TEAC FD-235J, I bought another that came out of a Nortel Meridian telecoms system at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEAC-NORTEL-Meridi … ?orig_cvip=true, which has a SCSI adapter board.

Getting it to work with my PC was not as straightforward as removing the SCSI adapter and setting the jumpers to match my other TEAC FD-235J. As soon as I turned the power on, the power just cut out immediately due to a short circuit.

After doing lots of diagnosing and probing around with my multi-meter, I found that some of the pins of the 34 pin connector, 5, 7, 9 and 11, that is normally ground is 5V instead, which is how the SCSI adapter board gets its power. Like with the Sony MP-F17W-17, there is also a setting in the form of a 0 ohm SMD resistor to make those pins ground instead of 5V, which is to move the resistor from S2 to S1. I also took out the cable key notch.

After plugging it in, hey-presto, it works! However, the FD-235J, suffixed with 5670, that I have just converted has to have the RY34 / DC34 jumper disconnected, otherwise the system thinks that the drive is not ready, even when there is a disk in it! With the other TEAC FD-235J, suffixed with 3653, the DC34 (disk change, across A3/B3) jumper is shorted, otherwise the system will think that there is a disk in it at all times, even when there is no disk in it, or the old disk is still in it after you had changed the disk!

I have also found that not all floppy drive controllers supports 2.88MB floppy drives. They may work with 720KB and 1.44MB, but not 2.88MB. Whilst I may do a compatibility list in the future, the motherboards (with onboard controllers) that I have found to be compatible are the Intel LT430TX and QDI Advance 6T and 10T.

I hope that this will also be useful for anyone else who are having similar issues.

As below, you can see that one of the jumper settings is different, as both drives report disk change / drive ready differently to the system, despite both being TEAC FD-235J, but with different suffixes (3653 and 5670) to the model.

As for the original one that I bought over 18 months ago, I had a problem with the disk presence sensor that was sometimes sticking to on, despite correcting the jumper setting, causing the system to think that there is a disk present when in fact there is none, or the old disk is still present after it has been changed.

I bought a TEAC FD-235HF at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEAC-fd-235hf-3165 … ?orig_cvip=true, suffixed with 3165, as there are so many variations of this 1.44MB model. This variant has the same motor and sensors board, therefore a straight swap-out of the board fixed the issue. You will see that the board from the FD-235HF is much cleaner. As the LED sits inside the brown holder and is removable, I were also able to swap them, keeping the original yellow and green ones with the original drives. I also swapped out the rusted up screws.

Hello,

At http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html#288 you can read read that :

You also need a floppy controller that's capable of decoding/encoding the 2.88MB higher data rate. Intel produced a controller chip for ED, the 82077; there's a tech-note AP-358 as referenced on this Web page. 2.88MB drives include the TEAC 235J-600, Toshiba PD-211 and ND3571, Panasonic JU259A, Mitsubishi MF356C models 252UG and 788UG, Epson SMD-1060, Sony MP-F40W-14 or -15. unfortunately, these have different means of establishing HD and ED modes on the 44-pin connector.

You can also read :

You have to custom wire the drive to the HD/ED floppy controller

Do we have to ?

Dhigan wrote on 2020-01-19, 17:57:

Hello, […]
Show full quote

Hello,

At http://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/drive.html#288 you can read read that :

You also need a floppy controller that's capable of decoding/encoding the 2.88MB higher data rate. Intel produced a controller chip for ED, the 82077; there's a tech-note AP-358 as referenced on this Web page. 2.88MB drives include the TEAC 235J-600, Toshiba PD-211 and ND3571, Panasonic JU259A, Mitsubishi MF356C models 252UG and 788UG, Epson SMD-1060, Sony MP-F40W-14 or -15. unfortunately, these have different means of establishing HD and ED modes on the 44-pin connector.

You can also read :

You have to custom wire the drive to the HD/ED floppy controller

Do we have to ?

I haven't read the link but I do know that many (and I mean like what appeared to be the vast majority) of the 2.88MB drives were actually wired for use in IBM systems, which made them pc-incompatible (ironically enough).
There exist the 2.88MB drives which are wired for pc out of the box. Best is to treat each of these 2.88MB drives individually.
I'll read the link later, I just got here 😜

The part about needing a floppydrive controller suitable for the 2.88 drives is correct btw. As a rule of thumb one could roughly state that a motherboard 'modern' enough to have an onboard floppydrive controller (which kinda means from 486 PCI motherboards and up) will support these drives.

s3freak wrote on 2018-12-25, 12:45:

I am doing a collection of 2.88MB floppy disks and drives, where at the time of posting, I already have a TEAC FD-235J drive at […]
Show full quote

I am doing a collection of 2.88MB floppy disks and drives, where at the time of posting, I already have a TEAC FD-235J drive at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEAC-2-88MB-FLOPPY … &orig_cvip=true, a box of 10 JVC and 3M extra-high density floppy disks each, and 3 individual disks of other brands, totalling 23 disks.

I just successfully bid and bought a Sony MP-F40W-17 2.88MB 3.5” Floppy Drive, off an eBay seller at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-MP-F40W-17-2- … ?orig_cvip=true, after being outbid at the very last moment on almost the same MP-F40W-23 a couple of months ago at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SONY-MFD-40W-21-Fl … ?orig_cvip=true, both of them were untested.

Front.jpg
Back.jpg
When I received and tested it, I found that although it could seek during POST, etc., it would not read my disks on nearly all IO controllers and motherboards.

When I used NFORMAT, it worked in terms of formatting and writing, but cannot read back from them. If I formatted the disk, with verify turned off, I could read back the formatted disk on other drives, controllers and motherboards.

However, on the Intel LT430TX motherboard, it initially did not boot from it, but after a retry it booted. It worked with 720KB and 1.44MB floppies, but not 2.88MB floppies, however formatting the 2.88MB floppies as 720KB worked fine.

When I checked the seller’s feedback of the MP-F40W-23 that I had missed out on, the seller received positive feedback from the buyer who is 100% enjoying, suggesting that the drive works, together with the box of 3M floppies that came with it.

Seeing that the lucky buyer’s drive worked, but mine with major compatibility issues, I compared the circuit board of the drive which was still on eBay to the one I have got, and found that one of the 0 ohm SMD resistors is in a different place, with three other missing.

I am aware that some floppy drives can be configured so that each pin sends and receives different signals according to the disk density, presence, etc. I have read at http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/floppy.html#82077SL that the suffixes on these Sony drives have different pin assignments.

I cannot find any other documentation of this drive on the web, other than 3.5” Micro Floppy Disk Drives from Peripherals – Pocket Service Guide at http://www.jope.fi/drives/diskettes-jumpers.pdf, which documents only the switch for drive 0/1/2 configuration, but not the SMD resistors configuration. The same documentation also documents the TEAC FD-235J, which enabled me to set the jumpers to be compatible with my QDI Advance 6T.

I therefore modified my MP-F40W-17 to match the MP-F40W-23 as follows:

- Moved the resistor from SL102 from A to B
- Removed the resistors from RJ14, RJ28 (points to just below SL103) and RJ40

Before.jpg
After.jpg
After the modification, I plugged it into my QDI Advance 6T in place of my TEAC FD-235J, did a DIR on my 1.44MB DOS boot disk, which successfully showed the directory listing! I also did the same for a 2.88MB disk, which succeeded too! SCANDISK, etc., also worked!

The only thing that is different between the two drives, other than my big saving, is that the bezel is non-standard for DEC computers on my drive, so I will have to find a standard bezel which will fit the drive.

I have now converted my MP-F40W-17 to a MP-F40W-23. If that eBay listing had gone after so long, I would have not been able to get it working. I hope that this will be useful to anyone else who are having similar issues.

Hi 😀

Firstly, I'd like to mention that I really enjoyed reading your adventures with these 2.88MB drives 😁
I've experimented with several of these drives years back myself 😀

I also wanted to mention something about the front bezel (the one that when looked at from the side looks a bit like a C), this bezel is probably Original as I also have one of these.
I'm not sure if I ever used NFORMAT, but I did try out several of these formatting tools. I remember one of these not working with the 2.88MB disks as it would not overformat these, but would overformat the other 2 main types of 3.5in disks. One other program did work, but I can't remember the name except it was something like "M3" or something (not the brand btw, but the name was something like that?). This program did manage to jam something like 3 megabytes of data onto such a disk. I can't report anything about the longterm reliability of the 2.88MB disks formatted in this way but it was never about reliability for me. I was just testing stuff 😜

But really fun to read! I found this thread via google btw. I don't understand why I didn't find it any sooner 😜

Hello, everyone! I'm a brand new member who found this thread vi Google. I have a couple of Sony MP-F40W-17 drives that I got very long ago--still in their pink poly sleves. I've wanted to use them as 3.5" ED drives, but I would settle for HD. I'm going to try to follow the directions of this post. So, thank you for that information. Before I do that, I thought I'd poke around on the PCB and see if I could find out what's going on. Here's what I found:

FDC Pin# 2 /DENSEL (controlled by RJ28/SL103)
FDC Pin# 3 GND (can't find anything on the back of the PCB that connects to it! Seems to be floating--no reasonable resistance to GND or +5V)
FDC Pin# 4 (controlled by SL106)
FDC Pin# 17 GND (controlled by SL104)
FDC Pin# 27 GND (controlled by SL105)
FDC Pin# 33 GND (controlled by RJ40/41)

I'm going to do the mod and see what happens. Several of the pins are jumpered to GND and that confuses tracing them. I'll see what I can find when I remove the resistors.

I hope that someone finds this as helpful as I found the info here. Thanks again!

Well, that didn't work. The motor never comes on. It responds to any drive select signal on any of the 0, 1, and 2 setting of the drive # selection slider. Clearly I have more poking about to do.

Hi Tetrium, Dhigan, and Willmore, as said in my signature, you could have sent a private message so that I could get back to you quicker, as I am not very active on this forum. I logged onto the forum primarily to update my avatar, which I have now done. I will reply properly when I get chance and post some updates. Welcome to the forum Dhigan and Willmore.

s3freak wrote on 2020-11-05, 18:25:

Hi Tetrium, Dhigan, and Willmore, as said in my signature, you could have sent a private message so that I could get back to you quicker, as I am not very active on this forum. I logged onto the forum primarily to update my avatar, which I have now done. I will reply properly when I get chance and post some updates. Welcome to the forum Dhigan and Willmore.

No worries 😀

And besides, if it's on the forums themselves, other people will be able to find it as well. There aren't many people using these drives nor its disks so any extra information about them available publicly is a good thing I think.

s3freak wrote on 2018-12-25, 12:45:

[...] I therefore modified my MP-F40W-17 to match the MP-F40W-23 as follows: […]
Show full quote

[...]
I therefore modified my MP-F40W-17 to match the MP-F40W-23 as follows:

- Moved the resistor from SL102 from A to B
- Removed the resistors from RJ14, RJ28 (points to just below SL103) and RJ40
[...]

Thanks for making this info available s3freak!
I recently got a MP-F40W-17 and I removed Rj14-RJ28 and RJ40 as explained
In my case SL102 was OK but I had to move S101 switch to position 0

it works fine with 1.44mb disks after modification - no idea about 2.88mb ones - never saw one in person

s3freak wrote on 2018-12-25, 12:45:

I am doing a collection of 2.88MB floppy disks and drives, where at the time of posting, I already have a TEAC FD-235J drive at […]
Show full quote

I am doing a collection of 2.88MB floppy disks and drives, where at the time of posting, I already have a TEAC FD-235J drive at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TEAC-2-88MB-FLOPPY … &orig_cvip=true, a box of 10 JVC and 3M extra-high density floppy disks each, and 3 individual disks of other brands, totalling 23 disks.

I just successfully bid and bought a Sony MP-F40W-17 2.88MB 3.5” Floppy Drive, off an eBay seller at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sony-MP-F40W-17-2- … ?orig_cvip=true, after being outbid at the very last moment on almost the same MP-F40W-23 a couple of months ago at https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SONY-MFD-40W-21-Fl … ?orig_cvip=true, both of them were untested.

Front.jpg
Back.jpg
When I received and tested it, I found that although it could seek during POST, etc., it would not read my disks on nearly all IO controllers and motherboards.

When I used NFORMAT, it worked in terms of formatting and writing, but cannot read back from them. If I formatted the disk, with verify turned off, I could read back the formatted disk on other drives, controllers and motherboards.

However, on the Intel LT430TX motherboard, it initially did not boot from it, but after a retry it booted. It worked with 720KB and 1.44MB floppies, but not 2.88MB floppies, however formatting the 2.88MB floppies as 720KB worked fine.

When I checked the seller’s feedback of the MP-F40W-23 that I had missed out on, the seller received positive feedback from the buyer who is 100% enjoying, suggesting that the drive works, together with the box of 3M floppies that came with it.

Seeing that the lucky buyer’s drive worked, but mine with major compatibility issues, I compared the circuit board of the drive which was still on eBay to the one I have got, and found that one of the 0 ohm SMD resistors is in a different place, with three other missing.

I am aware that some floppy drives can be configured so that each pin sends and receives different signals according to the disk density, presence, etc. I have read at http://www.tavi.co.uk/ps2pages/ohland/floppy.html#82077SL that the suffixes on these Sony drives have different pin assignments.

I cannot find any other documentation of this drive on the web, other than 3.5” Micro Floppy Disk Drives from Peripherals – Pocket Service Guide at http://www.jope.fi/drives/diskettes-jumpers.pdf, which documents only the switch for drive 0/1/2 configuration, but not the SMD resistors configuration. The same documentation also documents the TEAC FD-235J, which enabled me to set the jumpers to be compatible with my QDI Advance 6T.

I therefore modified my MP-F40W-17 to match the MP-F40W-23 as follows:

- Moved the resistor from SL102 from A to B
- Removed the resistors from RJ14, RJ28 (points to just below SL103) and RJ40

Before.jpg
After.jpg
After the modification, I plugged it into my QDI Advance 6T in place of my TEAC FD-235J, did a DIR on my 1.44MB DOS boot disk, which successfully showed the directory listing! I also did the same for a 2.88MB disk, which succeeded too! SCANDISK, etc., also worked!

The only thing that is different between the two drives, other than my big saving, is that the bezel is non-standard for DEC computers on my drive, so I will have to find a standard bezel which will fit the drive.

I have now converted my MP-F40W-17 to a MP-F40W-23. If that eBay listing had gone after so long, I would have not been able to get it working. I hope that this will be useful to anyone else who are having similar issues.

I have SONY MP-F40w-15 from friend. Its NOS. After starting PC the led on floppy drive goes on and stays on. Anyone has one and it works on PC? It also has jumpers on side. Wanted to try 2.88MB floppys first time in my life and floppydrive does not work ;(

- Moved the resistor from SL102 from A to B
- Removed the resistors from RJ14, RJ28 (points to just below SL103) and RJ40

I have found only RJ40(no change after removing it). RJ28 is already missing from factory. RJ14 and SL102 is not on this model, or im not good in "finding Willi"

mophus wrote on 2023-03-13, 02:06:

I have SONY MP-F40w-15 from friend.

Well, there's your problem right there. It's a bloody SONY. You'd better make sure the connector is not the wrong way around, like in many of their products.

Deunan wrote on 2023-03-13, 11:14:

mophus wrote on 2023-03-13, 02:06:

I have SONY MP-F40w-15 from friend.

Well, there's your problem right there. It's a bloody SONY. You'd better make sure the connector is not the wrong way around, like in many of their products.

Thats the first think i suspected. That i put the cable wrong way around but i checkted that its imopsible to put it wrong on mobo or floppy. Didnt think that conector on floppy can be wrong. Its somehow tested at factory.

I will find old cable and try to connect it "wrong way around". Thanks. I will report if it helps. Or maybe better to mesure it 😀

mophus wrote on 2023-03-13, 17:28:

I will find old cable and try to connect it "wrong way around". Thanks. I will report if it helps. Or maybe better to mesure it 😀

There usually are some markings on the PCB, next to the connector, that hint where pin 1 is - and that is pretty much always correct. Decent ribbon cables should have pin 1 wire in different color.

Deunan wrote on 2023-03-13, 19:32:

There usually are some markings on the PCB, next to the connector, that hint where pin 1 is - and that is pretty much always correct. Decent ribbon cables should have pin 1 wire in different color.

Yes they are. You can see it on my pictures. Your right #1

Yes the connector is "upside down". Noch or how its cold is on the oposite side. I was playing with it at night and didnt look on it. I trusted SONY. My mistake. In past i always knew- if floppy led stays on then ribon cable is upside down. Your right #2

After connecting it with old calble it works. I tested 720KB floppys and 1.44MB ones. Sadly my ED disks are broken i think. It cant format it to 2.88. I was able to format it to 720KB on other drive but many badsectors are present. I tried to format DD to 2.88MB and it passed but only 500KB was ok. Rest was badsectros.
Im doing it on Win98SE. I think that drive is OK. Only my ED disks are not good anymore.

Thanks for help. A lot of progress thanks to You.

Ps. I hope my english is readable

Edit.
After some playing i found that this drive accepts 720KB and 1.44MB disks to be formated to 2.88MB. I managed to format one(from 8 known good 1.44MB disks) maxell 2HD disk to 2.88MB without errors. Writing 2.74MB files to disk and loading it from disk have worked. After formating it agin sadly some errors appeared. Never the less drive works.

Here is YT film about using HD disks as a ED . Maybe it will help some one to test the drive using 1.44 Floppies.https://youtu.be/F7_SY3TKAP8

Hello Everyone!

I've decided to reactivate this post for future researchers 😉
I've got Sony MP-F40W-00.
This model is designated for use with PS/2 computers and has no power connector at all.
The current is delivered on pin 3 and 6 - +5V and +12V respectively.
After tweaking data ribbon I've got this drive working but not fully...
I mean that only 720k floppies were readable. Of course I've had some suspicions about my ED floppies which I've got only a few but 1,44s have not been readable also.

Reading standard and ps/2 floppies pinout I've noticed that pin 2 is responsible for high density select.
From the motherboard side it seemed to be in high impedance state irrespective of BIOS settings. So I've cut this wire in data ribbon and I've pulled it down (to GND).
And surprise - HD flopies has started to work. DD has been still working, but unfortunately 2.88... without luck.
Then I've found this topic and I've started to rethink...
So basically I've grabbed multimeter and I've started to check odd pins for resistance to the GND.
Only pins 9 and 33 weren't hard wired to the ground on the odd side.
With Pin 9 either pulled up or down or Hi-Z - nothing happens.
But Pin 33 is connected to the ground on the motherboard side.
So I've cut corresponding wire and I've got only 1.44 working....
After trying different combinations, I've found this:
2/9/33

Hi-Z/Low/Low - only DD
Low/Low/Low - DD/HD
Low/Low/Hi-Z - DD/HD
Low/Hi-Z/Hi-Z - only HD
Hi-Z/Hi-Z/Hi-Z - HD/ED
Hi-Z/Hi-Z/High - HD/ED

Frankly I can't see any sense in checking all 27 combinations.
While DD floppy is present then both capacity sensors are pulled down, so single OR gate should be enough to drive pin 33 correctly according to the real capacity of the floppy.
And of course I can add simple switch.

😀