double check your termination

I'm pretty sure termination is OK.
I suspect the problem may be that the drive requires some special SCSI commands - not implemented in the Adaptec BIOS/drivers.
But perhaps there's some special software for this drive?
Or some SCSI host adapter that supports it in its BIOS?

I was pretty sure I got one of mine working on either a Trantor T128 or Future Domain 850M (both 8 bit cards) at some point in the distant past. I don't recall them needing any special software either.
The whole purpose of the procedure was to add a 1.44MB to an XT during a time in which high density floppy controllers were almost impossible to find. I ended up abandoning this setup due to the excessive memory consumption due to having to load all the drivers....and because I found "2M".

Why exactly do you want to use a floppy drive on SCSI anyway?

TEAC expected you or your hardware vendor to write bespoke drivers

"SCSI INTERFACE FDD:

FD235HS (3.5", 1.4MB), FD235JS (3.5", 2.88MB), FD55GS (5.25", 1.2MB)
TEAC’s SCSI floppy drives are sold without software drivers. Unless your SCSI host adapter manufacturer has a specific driver for this floppy disk drive, for a PC or non-PC type of application, your engineering group will be responsible for the developing and implementation of software drivers applicable to your system. Programming information is available via our Fax on Demand’s document #2001."

so unless you can find PC or a SCSI HBA model with a driver you might be out of luck.

regardless of BIOS or driver support, it should still be at very least enumerated by ASPI8DOS.SYS (assuming you use the /D switch when loading it to get full details)

if it's not, then something is physically wrong

In case anyone's looking, these tech docs relating to the TEAC SCSI FDDs are still available on archive.org

plus two additional ones not listed

2025 - TEAC FD-235H(G)S-11XX TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF DIFFERENCES
2026 - TEAC FD-235HS HARDWARE SPECIFICATION

See if the Corel SCSI software package has a SCSI floppy driver.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2020-07-19, 16:46:

Why exactly do you want to use a floppy drive on SCSI anyway?

Well, I just received that drive, and want to see if it's operational.
Also, it may come in handy for a three-FDD machine: 1.44MB, 1.2MB, 360KB.

See if the Corel SCSI software package has a SCSI floppy driver.

...and this has led to some progress...
There are two drivers:

REW_ASP.SYS - CorelSCSI! Re-Writable Device Driver Version 4.10c
UNI_ASP.SYS - CorelSCSI! Universal (Write-Once/Re-Writable) Device Driver Version 4.10e

...and any of them finds the drive, and installs a drive letter.
When trying to access the diskette, the drive LED is lit as expected, but then "Not ready reading drive D".

CorelSCSI Tools now provides some additional info - but note the nonsense drive capacity:

Trying to format the diskette results with an error:

...however, if "Force low level format" is on, it seems to actually format the disk before displaying that error - I can hear the stepper moving, and the diskette ends up unreadable in a regular FDD until formatted again.

Meanwhile, I've found a T128 SCSI Host Adapter - so, any more ideas to try before I give up on the AHA-2940, and replace it with the Trantor?

Maybe try your luck with Adaptec SCSIWorks, as the readme specifically mentions TEAC SCSI floppy drives in the compatibility list

Disk 1 https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/speed/obs … csiwks1_exe.php
Disk 2 https://storage.microsemi.com/en-us/speed/obs … csiwks2_exe.php

IT'S ALIVE!

So I've downloaded that SCSIworks! - which is actually Trantor's, and supports hardly any non-Trantor host adapters.
Anyway, Adaptec's ASPI8DOS.SYS and Trantor's TSCSI.SYS didn't work together.

So I've installed the Trantor T128, and... SUCCESS!
MA120.SYS and TSCSI.SYS do the work.

Trantor's MA120.SYS and Adaptec's ASPIDISK.SYS also work together, and maybe even better - MA120+TSCSI provide the SCSI FDD as a non-removable disk (with some nonsense geometry, bad when formatting a bootable diskette), but no such problem with MA120+ASPIDISK.

It seems that the main problem was with ASPI8DOS.SYS not recognizing the drive - if the ASPI manager can't see any devices, high-level drivers like ASPIDISK.SYS or TSCSI.SYS have nothing to do...

Overall, I got the drive to work OK, but there are certain limitations:
* there are some timing problems somewhere, resulting in silent data corruption - disabling 0WS on T128 didn't help, disabling L1 and L2 cache did... heh, XT-era and Socket7-era technologies don't mix very well
* T128 SCSI BIOS conflicts with HDD support in the main BIOS - must either disable the T128 BIOS, or set all HDDs in CMOS Setup to "None"
* T128 SCSI BIOS doesn't seem to support booting from the SCSI FDD
* can't use the SCSI FDD with my favourite diskette imaging software, ie. DskImage by M. Brutman, and DiskDupe Pro 3 Version 7.0
* I don't even dare to try with non-standard disk formats, or copy-protected media...

Anyway, big thanks for the help!

Hi all!
I got Teac FD-235JS. Represents Teac FD-235J + controller FC-1

FDD checked separately - works fine.
Two nuances - you need to rearrange the resistor, which supplies power to fc-1 to part of the ground. Otherwise, he gives up the spirit.
And the jumpers that I found here https://web.archive.org/web/20060915120023/ht … df/3fd0010a.pdf
For normal operation, these are A1-B1, C3-D3, D4-E4, F3-F4, E2-F2, B4-C4, G2-G3 and E1-F1.
Further, the SCSI device is seen by the 2940UW controller, although it does not consider it a disk and, accordingly (as I understand it), it will not work to boot from it.
I use an external terminator.

On this, in fact, everything ends, the disk is there, even scsitool / hdat2 sees it, but nothing is read or written.
format tries to format to 30 megabytes...

Two questions - does it make sense to try to sort out scsi controllers, in search of the one from which it will be possible to boot?
and what kind of driver, besides aspidisk.sys, should he slip it?

led178 wrote on 2022-07-27, 12:20:

FDD checked separately - works fine.

Did you set it as a 1.44MB FDD or as a 2.88MB FDD? Iirc Teac FD-235J should be a 2.88MB ED drive.
You could test by either using a real 2.88MB floppy disk or you could use a throwaway test disk (perhaps cut a hole in the appropriate place on the disk if the drive uses a pin to detect the density or try to force format to 2.88MB, been a while since I last tested my 2.88MB drives).

2.88MB drives are not easy to come by, so if it's a real 2.88MB drive you should treasure it! 😜

I've never really experimented with SCSI, so I can't really tell you much about that.

EDIT:
There's some more info on that drive available here, though unsure if it is of any use to you
Sony MP-F40W-17 / TEAC FD-235J 2.88MB 3.5” Floppy Drives

I checked it as 1.44mb. I'm more concerned about the SCSI part now 😀
What's the point of a floppy drive if you can't get floppy disks to it?

led178 wrote on 2022-07-27, 13:08:

I checked it as 1.44mb. I'm more concerned about the SCSI part now 😀
What's the point of a floppy drive if you can't get floppy disks to it?

You could see it as being somewhat similar to using a Voodoo 5 6000 in order to play Pac-Man 😜

Btw I did edit my previous reply, but you were faster 😜

led178 wrote on 2022-07-27, 12:20:

Two questions - does it make sense to try to sort out scsi controllers, in search of the one from which it will be possible to boot?
and what kind of driver, besides aspidisk.sys, should he slip it?

See my previous post - I've only had luck with Trantor T128 card and SCSIworks! software.
But AFAIR I couldn't boot off the SCSI floppy.

Hopefully, it should also work with other host adapters supported by SCSIworks! - they are mostly Trantor's, but there's also the ASPI2DOS.SYS for Adaptec AHA-1510/1520/1522.

Meanwhile, I also got the -JS drive, which could use some testing... so, if you need assistance, I'm ready to help!

I seem to think a buslogic 930/932/950/952 HBA with the non-raid bios (1.41?) supports this drive? I'm not positive any came with that bios.

Uff. A bunch of dependencies.
It turned out with AVA-1505 (AIC-6330Q), without BIOS, APSI2DOS 3.68 / TSCSI 4.60, and only after turning it on (not after a hot reboot). PCI 486.
It did not work on the AHA-1522A 1.20L AIC-6360Q with or without the BIOS.
Failed on Tekram DC-300B
And then, unexpectedly, it almost turned out on 2940UW (ASPI8DOS.SYS 1.36 / TSCSI 4.60), the files are read, but scsitool/hdat2 can no longer.