VOGONS


First post, by Keatah

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A topic for general discussion.

What are the better 5.25" 1.2MB floppy drives around?
Surely some these vintages drives have hidden strengths and weaknesses when it comes to durability and construction and longevity. Thinking of failure points for certain models. Or if any models stand out in the reliability department.

Reply 1 of 11, by debs3759

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I imagine it's hard to be choosy with items that are hard to come by. I have a couple I need to find somewhere in my collection, ready for early builds - will probably use one in a 486 build and one in a 386, but mainly for copying files to more easily sourced 3.5" discs. Even in an XT build, I'll probably stick to 3.5 personally, unless I get lucky and find a couple more 5.25 and some NOS discs.

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Reply 2 of 11, by BitWrangler

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I always liked Panasonics, but I can't remember why, maybe because the model numbers were short and I could remember them, like JU-475.. But in use they were usually smooth and didn't sound like they were doing unspeakable things to your disk.

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Reply 4 of 11, by Anonymous Coward

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Y E Data drives are the ones that came in the original AT, right? Those things are solid.

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Reply 5 of 11, by mockingbird

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maxtherabbit wrote on 2022-01-02, 02:22:

I've great luck with YE-Data and Epson 5.25" drives. Not so much with Panasonic

Panasonic JU-475 series just need to be cleaned and re-lubricated. They almost always have the same fault, where the grease has dried up on the worm gear and shaft and the head can't move freely. Takes all of 15 minutes to fix and I have never had one not work after doing this.

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Reply 6 of 11, by Errius

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That reminds me of those Teac combo 5.25"/3.5" drives that are in such demand nowadays. The upper 3.5" floppy drive has a really bad design feature where the head is in constant friction with the roof of the drive. (A result of it being so thin.) When the grease there hardens, the head breaks.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 8 of 11, by Errius

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I have two of these, one is broken and the other is still in its box as I'm afraid to use it. (The broken one works as a regular 5.25" drive once you disconnect the 3.5" unit.)

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 9 of 11, by Bondi

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I'm also for Epson drives. It's not that I had many of them, but after reading opinions online I have chosen an Epson drive for myself, SD-700 in particular.

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Reply 10 of 11, by clb

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I found that my Epson SD-700 would not pass the King's Quest 1 copy protection check (the "Formaster Copylock" sector), but my Y-E DATA YD-380B rev1736B00W 1.2MB drive and Fujitsu M2551Ao8 360KB drives would. That could be due to a head misalignment or similar (though the Epson would otherwise correctly read the disk), but haven't looked into it deeper yet.

Reply 11 of 11, by maxtherabbit

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2022-01-02, 03:48:

Y E Data drives are the ones that came in the original AT, right? Those things are solid.

Yep. The XTs that used half height drives also used them (360k of course)