Emax

Hello everybody.

This Is my very first Post here in this Group. My Name is Sascha and 
I'm from northern Germany. I'm owner of EmaxII Mod 2212.

If you allready know all of my experiences please ignore this mail :-
) and please forgive me my sometimes defective english.

After Powering the Emax some day the Display said "Please Insert 
Disk" and the Red LED between ENTER and Dynamic Processing light up. 
I wondered about the Red Light and its undocumented meaning. But now 
I know that it simply says, that there is not bootable OS available 
from Boot-Device and something is somehow wrong. 

After putting the EMXP-tested Floppy with OS into the Drive the 
Display continuously switched between "Disk not formatted" 
and "Insert Boot Disk" and started with continued noisy Head-
Activity. Turning the Emax off and on again ... oups ... now I had 
two red error lights. Off - On ... Again only red light... The Red 
light was right. There was something wrong.

So I tried to Boot from external SCSI-Zip-100.

Some of you and the manual says, the EmaxII is "scanning" all SCSI 
ID's if Floppy is without Bootable OS. This seems not 100% correct if 
Boot – Device is previously set to a specific ID with Master 9 
function and/or the FloppyDrive is Dead. Also, with the Red Light on 
and a non-working Floppy-Drive you are not able to access Master 9 
for Changing the Default SCSI-Devise. Tricks with Jumpers on Floppy-
Connector or whatever also don't work of course. You are shut out. 
After hours of working, cleaning and testing with the original one 
there was no doubt … the Drive is out of Service.

I don't like to do visible handicrafts for PCMCIA, Flash or whatever. 
I tried to work out a Solution with a PC-Floppy-Drive for a clean and 
original Look of the Emax. I knew that I need a Drive with Jumpers. 
But I learned it is easier to win the Lottery-Jackpot than finding a 
known compatible Drive for less Money. A hundred Dollars for a Drive 
from an established "Studio"-Website in US including S/H, Import Tax 
plus 19% normal Tax (Germany!)  …. NO WAY! Don't misunderstand me, 
the price alone may be ok, but all together is to expensive for me. I 
have two hungry Kids. My Job is IT, EMAX is IT … there must be 
another solution I thought. So I went down to the cellar, looking for 
any skeletons.

I found several Drives but all without Jumpers and as I opened up the 
very last cardboard box, virtually counting the amout for a "Studio"-
Drive, I found a Panasonic JU-257A604P, out of a 384DX40 PC … bought 
15 Years ago and gone a long time ago. Again … no Jumpers. 

A millisecond before throwing it back into the box I saw a very 
little tiny switch between motor and connector with I and 0. Gotcha?

It works! Here is the How-to for this Drive

1)	Open up your PC and temporarily connect the Drive with ID-
Switch set to 1 instead your Build-In Floppy-Drive. This is 
recommended, because Floppy-Read/Write-Heads can loose adjustment and 
so maybe a FloppyDisk build perfekt in one Drive isn't readable in 
another older Drive.
2)	Use EMXP to build a formatted Boot Disk with OS and after 
this undo your PC-Mods.
3)	Switch Floppy Drive from ID-1 to ID-0 and build the drive 
into your Emax.
4)	NOTE: You can not use the original Emax-Floppy- DataCable 
with a PC-Floppy-Drive. Controller Damage possible. Look for a PC-
Floppy-Drive Connector Cable with twisted Lines at one end. In normal 
Cases this Cable has 3 Connectors. 1 for PC-Motherboard and two for 
Floppy-Drives A and B where A is at the twisted end and B the other 
one in the middle of the cable. NOTE: You can not use the normal PC-
Motherboard-End of this Cable, because one Pinhole (Pin 5?) in the 
Connector is usually Blind or Factory Closed. Don't use Brutal Force 
to replace the Cable inside the Emax. You need to take the two Drive-
Connectors A and B. There are no Blind or Sealed Pinholes. Plug the 
Twisted Side Connector (A) into the new Drive and the other Connector 
(B) onto the Emax-Board. 
5)	NOTE: Before closing the Emax-Case make several tests and 
inspection for correct connection. Don't forget to connect the 
FloppyDrive-Powerline. Especially take care about Pin 1-Connections 
of the DataCable, a usually Red marked Line. Connect the Emax 
External PowerLine. Hold your Head near the Power Unit. When you turn 
the EMAX on and you hear a muted high Tone out of the Power Unit and 
the tone is getting higher and higher like a bomb seconds before 
explosion, something went wrong. Immediately turn the Emax off or you 
will kill the Power Unit. Check all connections again as explained.

To see the correct Connections I used in my EmaxII look at my 
Pictures inside emax-Group. 

IF everything is mounted and connected correctly turn the Emax on. 
There should be no Red light on Front Panel and Floppy Drive / 
Display is awaiting the OS-Disk which will now boot the System 
without any problems including ZIP-Drive.

And after this experience there should be more than only a few TEAC-
Floppy-Drives for spare and you don't need Drives with tons of 
possible Jumper Settings. Just take a look for old 286 oder 386 .. 
maybe 486 – PC's and I guess you will find a suitable Drive. My 
Panasonic Drive is quite often at ebay. I guess I will buy some more 
spareparts.

Hopefully this story will help somebody with same problems.

Of course, I do not garantie anything. If you do like I did … your 
Risk.

regards

Sascha

kellnssc