Hi BitFlip,

I recently serviced the FDD of my Compaq 486 DX4/75 laptop which also had a disintegrated belt. In absence of the correct replacement belt, I ordered an assortment of belts for cassette players/recorders from Amazon. This worked for me in combination with lubricating the bearings of the guide wheels and I got the drive working again. This may not be the best or correct solution and your mileage may vary. I am curious to hear what other options have worked for others if an original belt can't be sourced.

sp3hybrid wrote on 2024-02-19, 09:54:

Hi BitFlip,

I recently serviced the FDD of my Compaq 486 DX4/75 laptop which also had a disintegrated belt. In absence of the correct replacement belt, I ordered an assortment of belts for cassette players/recorders from Amazon. This worked for me in combination with lubricating the bearings of the guide wheels and I got the drive working again. This may not be the best or correct solution and your mileage may vary. I am curious to hear what other options have worked for others if an original belt can't be sourced.

Ahh that make me more optimistic that I can get the FDD working as it looks immaculate inside and looks bearly used, I have already pulled the drive apart and lubricated the required parts in anticipation of sourcing said belt.

Could you possibly provide me with the link that you used on Amazon? I can see several listings and want to be sure I get the correct pack or close enough too atleast, The belt looks to be very thin height wise and I'd say its about 0.5mm or so but the length I have no idea on unfortunately.

The laptop has PCMCIA ports but sadly as expected they are non bootable so at the moment I'm basically stuck to transferring files etc with that method.

Thanks again

Hi BitFlip,

The belts came in an assortment pack of 120 flat belts of different lengths. The Amazon title was

"120Pcs Universal 40-135mm Mix Cassette Tape Machine Square Belt Assorted Repair"

I'm not sure if this is the right belt to use but they had the correct width and worked for me.

On another note, on a lot of my vintage laptops I tend to take the hard drive out and connect it to my Linux Desktop through a USB to IDE adapter. They are cheap and usually come with a 40 pin regular connector together with the molex plug for power and also with a 44 pin laptop adapter. The one I have is a generic one from Amazon. It works in only about half of my drives but when it works it is my preferred method of transferring data to my laptops.

sp3hybrid wrote on 2024-02-20, 07:13:

Hi BitFlip, […]
Show full quote

Hi BitFlip,

The belts came in an assortment pack of 120 flat belts of different lengths. The Amazon title was

"120Pcs Universal 40-135mm Mix Cassette Tape Machine Square Belt Assorted Repair"

I'm not sure if this is the right belt to use but they had the correct width and worked for me.

On another note, on a lot of my vintage laptops I tend to take the hard drive out and connect it to my Linux Desktop through a USB to IDE adapter. They are cheap and usually come with a 40 pin regular connector together with the molex plug for power and also with a 44 pin laptop adapter. The one I have is a generic one from Amazon. It works in only about half of my drives but when it works it is my preferred method of transferring data to my laptops.

Cheers, my FDD uses a flat belt type and not square but I will try to find a similar listing with flat belts and see what turns up.

I also did the same, pulled the HDD and prepared it on my main "modern" desktop within VMware using a HDD dock which turned out fine.

I do really want to know if I can wire up a more standard 34 pin FDD to the motherboard header though so hopefully someone with a bit more knowhow and experience in the matter will come along soon.

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-20, 07:22:

Cheers, my FDD uses a flat belt type and not square but I will try to find a similar listing with flat belts and see what turns […]
Show full quote

sp3hybrid wrote on 2024-02-20, 07:13:

Hi BitFlip, […]
Show full quote

Hi BitFlip,

The belts came in an assortment pack of 120 flat belts of different lengths. The Amazon title was

"120Pcs Universal 40-135mm Mix Cassette Tape Machine Square Belt Assorted Repair"

I'm not sure if this is the right belt to use but they had the correct width and worked for me.

On another note, on a lot of my vintage laptops I tend to take the hard drive out and connect it to my Linux Desktop through a USB to IDE adapter. They are cheap and usually come with a 40 pin regular connector together with the molex plug for power and also with a 44 pin laptop adapter. The one I have is a generic one from Amazon. It works in only about half of my drives but when it works it is my preferred method of transferring data to my laptops.

Cheers, my FDD uses a flat belt type and not square but I will try to find a similar listing with flat belts and see what turns up.

I also did the same, pulled the HDD and prepared it on my main "modern" desktop within VMware using a HDD dock which turned out fine.

I do really want to know if I can wire up a more standard 34 pin FDD to the motherboard header though so hopefully someone with a bit more knowhow and experience in the matter will come along soon.

It's good that you're already aware of how to use PCMCIA to transfer files - personally that's my preferred method but sometimes you just do need a floppy drive.
For the T2130 it's also quite integral to the laptop too.

You can use any EME278 or EME279 drive in its place, with the connector at either the top or bottom of the drive but they all need new belts now - I have successfully put an EME279 into one of my T2130CS laptops where I wasn't able to get the original drive working.
Here's the belt if you'd like to print it in TPU or another flexible material, it works in all the EME278 and EME279 drives I've place it in and I printed like 40 of them last time I had the printer set up for it.

Refurbishing the floppy drive requires a tool like IMD / imagedisk for in-depth testing though booting from a Windows 98 boot floppy is my usual 'good-enough' test if no further diagnostics are required.
When testing the floppy drive if it's one with the PCB on top, make sure the PCB is screwed down because the Track 0 sensor is connected with a zebra strip which requires a good physical connection between the PCB and the strip along with some pressure, which is what the aluminium lid adds to.
Replacement drives can be sourced from Toshiba external floppy drive caddies - the rectangular ones with a button on the back corner.

For outright replacing the drive it looks like someone already made an adapter PCB or flex cable which converts 1.25mm to 1mm pitch: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/26- … github.1237299/
Or you could fit a regular direct-drive floppy since the pinout isn't weird - watch out for connector orientation though, the T21xx series internal floppy pinout is the exact reverse of the standard and the EME278 itself, so the FPC orientation may need to be swapped - I've marked the VCC pins with red pen:

I think there would be simpler / cheaper ways to connect that up potentially. I have manually wired up a non-standard pinout floppy drive to a regular pinout, 26 wires isn't too bad: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

There's also a really good discussion on the requirements to get a Gotek floppy emulator working with a Toshiba laptop - the caddy pictured here is the external version of your FDD: https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3615
Some risks to this though sadly - since this thread's time, the Gotek has switched over to using Artery microcontrollers and the SFRM72-DU26 may have a controller that's not up to the job of running FlashFloppy or HxC. This slim type is required for fitting in a laptop since regular size 3.5" drives will not fit. The situation with the Gotek looks like it's got worse for the slim drives, openflops would be something to consider...

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-20, 17:20:

It's good that you're already aware of how to use PCMCIA to transfer files - personally that's my preferred method but sometimes […]
Show full quote

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-20, 07:22:

Cheers, my FDD uses a flat belt type and not square but I will try to find a similar listing with flat belts and see what turns […]
Show full quote

sp3hybrid wrote on 2024-02-20, 07:13:

Hi BitFlip, […]
Show full quote

Hi BitFlip,

The belts came in an assortment pack of 120 flat belts of different lengths. The Amazon title was

"120Pcs Universal 40-135mm Mix Cassette Tape Machine Square Belt Assorted Repair"

I'm not sure if this is the right belt to use but they had the correct width and worked for me.

On another note, on a lot of my vintage laptops I tend to take the hard drive out and connect it to my Linux Desktop through a USB to IDE adapter. They are cheap and usually come with a 40 pin regular connector together with the molex plug for power and also with a 44 pin laptop adapter. The one I have is a generic one from Amazon. It works in only about half of my drives but when it works it is my preferred method of transferring data to my laptops.

Cheers, my FDD uses a flat belt type and not square but I will try to find a similar listing with flat belts and see what turns up.

I also did the same, pulled the HDD and prepared it on my main "modern" desktop within VMware using a HDD dock which turned out fine.

I do really want to know if I can wire up a more standard 34 pin FDD to the motherboard header though so hopefully someone with a bit more knowhow and experience in the matter will come along soon.

It's good that you're already aware of how to use PCMCIA to transfer files - personally that's my preferred method but sometimes you just do need a floppy drive.
For the T2130 it's also quite integral to the laptop too.

You can use any EME278 or EME279 drive in its place, with the connector at either the top or bottom of the drive but they all need new belts now - I have successfully put an EME279 into one of my T2130CS laptops where I wasn't able to get the original drive working.
Here's the belt if you'd like to print it in TPU or another flexible material, it works in all the EME278 and EME279 drives I've place it in and I printed like 40 of them last time I had the printer set up for it.

65mm diameter, 204mm circumference, 0.4mm thickness, 1.5mm height - Print settings:

• tested with cheap generic red & grey TPU filament
• 0.25mm nozzle
• non-textured print surface
• 0.15mm layer height
• vase mode

EME279TC-204mm circle-Thickpoint4mm-Height1point5mm.zip

Refurbishing the floppy drive requires a tool like IMD / imagedisk for in-depth testing though booting from a Windows 98 boot floppy is my usual 'good-enough' test if no further diagnostics are required.
When testing the floppy drive if it's one with the PCB on top, make sure the PCB is screwed down because the Track 0 sensor is connected with a zebra strip which requires a good physical connection between the PCB and the strip along with some pressure, which is what the aluminium lid adds to.
Replacement drives can be sourced from Toshiba external floppy drive caddies - the rectangular ones with a button on the back corner.

For outright replacing the drive it looks like someone already made an adapter PCB or flex cable which converts 1.25mm to 1mm pitch: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/26- … github.1237299/
Or you could fit a regular direct-drive floppy since the pinout isn't weird - watch out for connector orientation though, the T21xx series internal floppy pinout is the exact reverse of the standard and the EME278 itself, so the FPC orientation may need to be swapped - I've marked the VCC pins with red pen:
Toshiba-T2130-floppy-vs-EME278.JPG
I think there would be simpler / cheaper ways to connect that up potentially. I have manually wired up a non-standard pinout floppy drive to a regular pinout, 26 wires isn't too bad: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

There's also a really good discussion on the requirements to get a Gotek floppy emulator working with a Toshiba laptop - the caddy pictured here is the external version of your FDD: https://torlus.com/floppy/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3615
Some risks to this though sadly - since this thread's time, the Gotek has switched over to using Artery microcontrollers and the SFRM72-DU26 may have a controller that's not up to the job of running FlashFloppy or HxC. This slim type is required for fitting in a laptop since regular size 3.5" drives will not fit. The situation with the Gotek looks like it's got worse for the slim drives, openflops would be something to consider...

Oh wow excellent, exactly what I was looking for thank you very much for this.

Sadly I don't own a 3d printer and I'm not too sure if personally know anyone that does either, however I think I may have found a close match to the belt over on eBay although I will need to trim the height down, the dimensions I've found are 63mm diameter, 4mm height and 0.6mm thickness.

I really like this laptop, it's such a nice machine to use and I would like to keep the original FDD as much as I can, hopefully the belt after some "microsurgery" will work fine but if not you've given me some avenues to visit.

Make sure to remove the CMOS and/or hibernation batteries if you haven't already - all the Toshibas use a type that leaks and can cause damage. Some of these Toshibas also have ELNA brand caps in their internal power supplies that can leak, just something to watch out for.
On the floppy drive - is it a Citizen W1D?

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-20, 23:27:

Make sure to remove the CMOS and/or hibernation batteries if you haven't already - all the Toshibas use a type that leaks and can cause damage. Some of these Toshibas also have ELNA brand caps in their internal power supplies that can leak, just something to watch out for.
On the floppy drive - is it a Citizen W1D?

Hey, yeah I remove the 7.2v Varta hibernation battery as that leaked all over the place but the rechargeable coin cell was/is fine and is still holding charges, I checked out all of the caps and they seem fine leakage wise but I might recap it in the future anyway for good measure.

I cleaned up all the corrosion from the Varta and neutralised it all and gave the motherboard a good scrub, it looks brand new now.

The FDD is a Matsushita

Update

While I wait for the belts to arrive from eBay I thought I'd take a look at some UK based 3d printing services and have found one, I uploaded the supplied model file which was accepted and gives you a GFX of the model but there is an option I can change pertaining to the infill which was defaulted at 20%, there's 50% and 100% options also there's options to select FDM or SLS with FDM being the default.

Which options should I select or should I leave them default?

You're in the UK? I could send you one of my belts in a letter

The belt print requirements are quite specific, it has to be in vase mode and it's way too small for infill, it's literally a thin string of filament in a loop

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-21, 00:03:

Hey, yeah I remove the 7.2v Varta hibernation battery as that leaked all over the place but the rechargeable coin cell was/is fi […]
Show full quote

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-20, 23:27:

Make sure to remove the CMOS and/or hibernation batteries if you haven't already - all the Toshibas use a type that leaks and can cause damage. Some of these Toshibas also have ELNA brand caps in their internal power supplies that can leak, just something to watch out for.
On the floppy drive - is it a Citizen W1D?

Hey, yeah I remove the 7.2v Varta hibernation battery as that leaked all over the place but the rechargeable coin cell was/is fine and is still holding charges, I checked out all of the caps and they seem fine leakage wise but I might recap it in the future anyway for good measure.

I cleaned up all the corrosion from the Varta and neutralised it all and gave the motherboard a good scrub, it looks brand new now.

The FDD is a Matsushita

What brand were the caps? If any were ELNA, I'd recommend replacing them preemptively. They've killed the power supplies in many of the Toshiba models older than this one, pretty much permanently. They can really cause a mess. I'm only asking because I remember seeing a similar model to the one you have on eBay that was missing the keyboard, and had an ELNA cap visible. They're probably fine right now, but in a few more years they won't be. ELNA caps can be very high-quality, but the seals on the "LongLife" series that a lot of these old computer power supplies used always fail with age.

Glad to hear it survived the varta bomb!
If the drive was a Citizen, there's a known compatible belt sold by a German eBay seller, but ah well.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-21, 13:06:

You're in the UK? I could send you one of my belts in a letter

The belt print requirements are quite specific, it has to be in vase mode and it's way too small for infill, it's literally a thin string of filament in a loop

Yeah I'm in Manchester, That would be great if you don't mind? I'm a bit sceptical on the eBay belts to be honest but it would be fantastic getting a known working belt.

Will PM you some details.

EDIT

Apparently I'm too newbie for the PM function 😁, Maybe the PM needs initiating with me by someone out of newbie mode first.

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-21, 14:15:

What brand were the caps? If any were ELNA, I'd recommend replacing them preemptively. They've killed the power supplies in many […]
Show full quote

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-21, 00:03:

Hey, yeah I remove the 7.2v Varta hibernation battery as that leaked all over the place but the rechargeable coin cell was/is fi […]
Show full quote

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-20, 23:27:

Make sure to remove the CMOS and/or hibernation batteries if you haven't already - all the Toshibas use a type that leaks and can cause damage. Some of these Toshibas also have ELNA brand caps in their internal power supplies that can leak, just something to watch out for.
On the floppy drive - is it a Citizen W1D?

Hey, yeah I remove the 7.2v Varta hibernation battery as that leaked all over the place but the rechargeable coin cell was/is fine and is still holding charges, I checked out all of the caps and they seem fine leakage wise but I might recap it in the future anyway for good measure.

I cleaned up all the corrosion from the Varta and neutralised it all and gave the motherboard a good scrub, it looks brand new now.

The FDD is a Matsushita

What brand were the caps? If any were ELNA, I'd recommend replacing them preemptively. They've killed the power supplies in many of the Toshiba models older than this one, pretty much permanently. They can really cause a mess. I'm only asking because I remember seeing a similar model to the one you have on eBay that was missing the keyboard, and had an ELNA cap visible. They're probably fine right now, but in a few more years they won't be. ELNA caps can be very high-quality, but the seals on the "LongLife" series that a lot of these old computer power supplies used always fail with age.

Glad to hear it survived the varta bomb!
If the drive was a Citizen, there's a known compatible belt sold by a German eBay seller, but ah well.

I will pull the top again tonight an have a look, It definitely needs a recap though because for the first minute or so there's a high pitched squealing coming from the PSU area that eventually levels off as the caps charge or heat up.

The drive is the only thing putting me off from this laptop oh and the fact there's no sound card but I can see there's a project in the works for developing a DOS PCMCIA sound card which really intrigues me!

Sounds like cap trouble to me. I don't know much about this model in specific, but late 80s-early 90s Toshibas are infamous for it, so I would not be surprised.

For the floppy drive, in the meantime before you can get the right belt, why not look into other options for file transfer? Even on laptops I have that have working disk drives, I rarely use them because using LapLink over parallel is usually way less of a pain. You need a special cable, but once you have it, it's really convenient and works well.

Don't bother recapping the mainboard, there's a leaking capacitor on the UA0392P01 inverter for the LCD panel. Once that's replaced the whining sound should clear up - see this: Re: Toshiba Satellite 200CDS
The leaked capacitor is always C3 and you can either side-mount the replacement or get a similarly small cap. I use a 10uF 50v that's just a little taller that works great. There may be some cap juice to clean up too and some damaged traces. Beware that you don't put too much heat into the white blob which is a thermal fuse on the transistors, that's really hard to replace.
You don't need to replace C1, that's a polymer capacitor and I've never seen one of those leak or fail. It can be worth removing it temporarily to clean the area underneath it though.

Don't open up the PSU either yet, not really worth it and I've only seen a couple with bad caps out of a lot.

I'll send you a PM and hopefully that'll work 😀

Thermalwrong, were the caps you saw ELNA LongLifes? If so, yes, they're probably fine NOW, but caps from that same series made a few years earlier leak rampantly. They're not a must-recap yet, but I'm only recommending it now to save people from trouble later. I'm only so insistent as "probably not worth it yet" is likely what a lot of people thought 5 years ago when their T1200XEs were still working.
FWIW, I'd expect the 200CDS to be very different internally from the T2130CS, which is older. I don't doubt this one also has bad inverter caps though, that's really common.

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-21, 16:05:

Sounds like cap trouble to me. I don't know much about this model in specific, but late 80s-early 90s Toshibas are infamous for it, so I would not be surprised.

For the floppy drive, in the meantime before you can get the right belt, why not look into other options for file transfer? Even on laptops I have that have working disk drives, I rarely use them because using LapLink over parallel is usually way less of a pain. You need a special cable, but once you have it, it's really convenient and works well.

I have the PCMCIA slots working after finding some Toshiba related restore media on ArchiveOrg, When I got the laptop it was dead, HDD, Floppy and power port was having an issue. Once I sorted the power port I dug out an old IDE drive I had and popped it into my DOS VM and initially configured the drive and drivers inside of that and then transferred the drive to the laptop and fired it up!

I am able to transfer files with a PCMCIA storage device but there is nothing like the sounds and feel of using the actual FDD, which takes me back to my teen days using an Amiga! So for me having the FDD working is a must! 😁

Do you know of any DOS\Windows 3.11 software that is able to mount floppy images?

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-02-21, 16:11:

Don't bother recapping the mainboard, there's a leaking capacitor on the UA0392P01 inverter for the LCD panel. Once that's repla […]
Show full quote

Don't bother recapping the mainboard, there's a leaking capacitor on the UA0392P01 inverter for the LCD panel. Once that's replaced the whining sound should clear up - see this: Re: Toshiba Satellite 200CDS
The leaked capacitor is always C3 and you can either side-mount the replacement or get a similarly small cap. I use a 10uF 50v that's just a little taller that works great. There may be some cap juice to clean up too and some damaged traces. Beware that you don't put too much heat into the white blob which is a thermal fuse on the transistors, that's really hard to replace.
You don't need to replace C1, that's a polymer capacitor and I've never seen one of those leak or fail. It can be worth removing it temporarily to clean the area underneath it though.

Don't open up the PSU either yet, not really worth it and I've only seen a couple with bad caps out of a lot.

I'll send you a PM and hopefully that'll work 😀

Ahh great I'm defiantly going to sort the cap out in the inverter then, The laptop internal looks absolutely mint! I really don't think its had many hours of use so at the moment I'm not too concerned about the other caps for now, I did briefly look at their bases and check for any bulging but I am happy I am getting some great advice from yourself and 3lectr1c.

Can I chew your ear about the RAM expansion slot? Mine is currently vacant and Id like to populate it with a 16MB or better a 24MB expansion, Is it a SIMM slot? It looks kind of weird to me and is not keyed.

I will look forward to seeing the mail icon light up! Hopefully 😀

EDIT

Seems the RAM is rare and hard to come by

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-21, 16:53:

I am able to transfer files with a PCMCIA storage device but there is nothing like the sounds and feel of using the actual FDD, which takes me back to my teen days using an Amiga! So for me having the FDD working is a must! 😁

Do you know of any DOS\Windows 3.11 software that is able to mount floppy images?

Ahh great I'm defiantly going to sort the cap out in the inverter then, The laptop internal looks absolutely mint! I really don't think its had many hours of use so at the moment I'm not too concerned about the other caps for now, I did briefly look at their bases and check for any bulging but I am happy I am getting some great advice from yourself and 3lectr1c.

Glad to help!

Fair enough on the FDD. Hope you can get that belt sorted.

I'm not aware of software that can do that but you don't need it. If you're dealing with floppy images, just extract them on a modern computer then move over the files directly.

Let me know whether any of the caps are ELNA caps or not if you get the chance. Regardless of whether you plan to replace them right now, it would be good to know just to document it.

3lectr1c wrote on 2024-02-21, 17:04:

Glad to help! […]
Show full quote

BitFlip wrote on 2024-02-21, 16:53:

I am able to transfer files with a PCMCIA storage device but there is nothing like the sounds and feel of using the actual FDD, which takes me back to my teen days using an Amiga! So for me having the FDD working is a must! 😁

Do you know of any DOS\Windows 3.11 software that is able to mount floppy images?

Ahh great I'm defiantly going to sort the cap out in the inverter then, The laptop internal looks absolutely mint! I really don't think its had many hours of use so at the moment I'm not too concerned about the other caps for now, I did briefly look at their bases and check for any bulging but I am happy I am getting some great advice from yourself and 3lectr1c.

Glad to help!

Fair enough on the FDD. Hope you can get that belt sorted.

I'm not aware of software that can do that but you don't need it. If you're dealing with floppy images, just extract them on a modern computer then move over the files directly.

Let me know whether any of the caps are ELNA caps or not if you get the chance. Regardless of whether you plan to replace them right now, it would be good to know just to document it.

100% will do, I will see how I feel when I get home from work later but if not this evening I'll most definitely have a nosy over weekend and let you know.

Sadly the belts are slightly too thick and rub together when passing the middle guide/idler.

At the mercy of Thermalwrong now. 😁