wierd_w wrote on 2025-04-01, 12:01:

Odd that the flopptical drives can only be IDs 1, 2, and 4. Termination type is a nice feature though. FAR too many narrow scsi devices handle that exclusively with a resistor pack.

On the SCSI enclosure there is a dial to select the desired ID.
With the dial you can go from 0 to 9, in the manual 0 and 7 are to be avoided because they belong to "system".

Probably combinations allow different IDs.
The txt file gives combos for jumpers for internal units, but the scsi dongle in the enclosure could be using settings selected via a different method, as the manual doesn't state any limit beside 0 and 7.

Edit:

Cloudschatze wrote on 2025-04-01, 12:44:

wierd_w wrote on 2025-04-01, 12:01:

Odd that the flopptical drives can only be IDs 1, 2, and 4.

The document could have explained this better, but the three ID jumpers are additive, providing an 0 - 7 range. All open = ID 0, all closed = ID 7, etc.

Makes sense now 😀
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I'll be starting a repair thread for this unit.
Not only 1 res and 1 cap are dead but also a big chip just close (see pic)

Hello Everyone,

I would like to make a small update on my part. I obtained some disks at a reasonable price and have been able to successfully read and write using the PLI drivers on my Mac and in DOS and Windows. I also obtained a loose internal unit likely from an SGI system and it worked without any issues with the drivers as well. I figured out how to get it working on DOS as my issue turned out to be with the SCSI adapter. I have some cheap Advansys cards I've had forever and none of them worked properly on dos with Insite drives. I recently got an adaptec pci adapter and that solved the issue. I also tested it on WindowsXP and it successfully identified the drive. Had a similar issue some have had where the drive was read only. I found a funny work around where if I loaded MacOS using BaslilskII loading the pli driver would send the proper unlock signal to the drive and it was then writable in Windows until the computer rebooted.

I still have one I used in the mid 90's and still have a dozen disk or so. I used a Buslogic BT-932 and it's bios was floptical aware. That bios is not the flashpoint RAID bios and available to flash for the whole family as I remember, 930,932,950,952. The last time I fired up that box it was having a hard time with many disc of all capacities. I didn't play with it long, boxed and kept it. It's an Abit IT5H with 3 2 channel cards, a 5 disc 80 pin cage and the floptical. As I left it in about 98 or so.

Does anyone have access to a drive and 21MB floptical disk, in order to make an image of a formatted disk? An acquaintance is researching the low-level format of the disks but having access to an image would make that work a lot easier :)

I have the protective cardboard thing.

I hand-drew the shape with measurements, it kinda looks awful but it does the job.
If any kind soul wishes to redo it better, thanks.
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It's two pieces glued together, 1.6mm in width.
In one part it's one piece named [A],
others 2 x 1.6 (3.2 mm) named .

Do you have a flatbed scanner, and some thin metal rulers?

If so, please place the rulers along the top and bottom of the glass with some clear tape, then arrange the item in the center, scan it, then send me the scan.

I can mangle together a 1:1 technical drawing out of that.

So, I finally removed the 49.9 resistance, it's actually a 49.9 resistance and not some weird value. Measured it's 50 / 49.9 ohms.
The capacitor under it is 133nF. Guess it's just that.
Probably some overvoltage created heat enough to vaporize the protective coating layer on the board.
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In the unit's manual it's written that the package contains a Macintosh external drive cable to power the unit.
The unit comes with a din-4 plug.
The din-4 has 2 holes on each side, the ones on:
-the right are actually +12V (this is my guess, see below)
-the left are GROUND, not +V.

In the enclosure there's a LM2575T-5, regulating the cvoltage down to +5V

When trying to power it up with the original enclosure, check your PSU.
Most are external HDD that carry both +5 and +12V, thus plugging it in may damage the floptical unit.
I tested the unit with a DC-DC converter and +12 was the most sensible choice as +5V to output +5V sounds a little too close and could be harmful or instable.
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Be careful of the voltage and pin position of your PSU, use a multimeter to check voltages.