Vintage Synth Repair

Don't read anything into what I said, I stated that this will allow you to save the data to the correct DSDD 720K discs, not load to them or format. Using HD discs in a decicated 720K drive is simply a bad idea, and why would you do this when DSDD discs are still available and more cost effective.
 
Rich at Route 66
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: jezosaurus@...
To: vintagesynthrepair@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 4:00 AM
Subject: Re: [vintagesynthrepair] Korg DSS1-Disk Drive route 66





On 2/11/07, mishon66@... < mishon66@...> wrote: 
I work at Route 66 and we have always had a replacement policy, if a drive shows up DOA no problem we replace it. It's not a perfect world and sometimes when things are shipped they can get damaged so we gladly replace them, what we don't do is give a monetary refund to a customer that finds it's not just the drive that needs to be replaced and decides that the repairs are to costly and then wants to return the parts.  
 
This seems to be a growing problem due to the influx of ebay gear and the customers taking that chance that the everything on the unit works. 


That is a policy that makes good commercial sense to me. 



One of our biggest issues is that we find many customers don't care to read the manual or our install guides which clearly show the media type for ALL the drives we sell and the units we are selling them for as DSDD 720k floppy's, they then try to use HD 1.44 floppy discs with the new drive and come screaming back to us stating that the drive will not work.
 
 Here is how it works: First off the drive you put in your unit does not dictate what media your unit can use, it is the unit itself that dictates what can and cannot be used. This is due to the FDC controller inside of every piece of electronic gear with a floppy drive, if it is a DSDD 720K FDC then the drive needs to be a 720k drive.
When you put a disc into your drive the drives chipset does a hand shake with the FDC controller and this is called media detection, if the disc does not match the FDCs requirements/instructions the FDC will send seek the closest ERROR message stored in the units OS like: "BAD DISC" "DRIVE ERROR" "UNFORMATTED DISC" "WRONG MEDIA TYPE" "FLOPPY DRIVE FAIL" 
 
Now many people say that "I have been using HD 1.44 discs with my original drive in my 01/w or EPS16+ or whatever unit with no problem"  Ok...I have too done this and the reason why it is posable is that the older drives being 8 to 10 years older have a much more dumbed down chipset then today's standard. 
These older drives will not reject the wrong media because they do not perform a thorough hand shake with the FDC controller, infact in some older drives these instructions are not even on the chipset.
On newer drives the on board chipset and the FDC controller perform a vary thorough hand shake and if the wrong media is detected it simply will not work. 
 
This is why if your using HD 1.44 in your older gear that requires DSDD 720K discs your making a huge mistake because at some point the drive will fail and you will run into this problem. Also using an HD 1.44 disc in your older gear that requires a DSDD 720k disc is just a bad idea because the 720k drive in your unit only saves data in the 720k format not the 1.44 format, this and most importantly uses less magnetism to save the data to the disc then the HD 1.44 and will simply fade out or erase it self over time.
 
There is still a way to save all your work because all the drives we sell will accept a disc with the tape over the hole on the back of the HD 1.44 disc and this will allow you to save the data to the correct DSDD 720K discs.

You're sort of contradicting yourself.
(I have a DSS1 and a Roland MV30 that both require DD (720k) disks. The DSS1 had no disks at all when I bought it, so I had to get it working purely from internet resources.)
You're saying that HD disks will not work in a newer DD drive because the logic in the drive will reject the HD disks. Then you say that you can 'convince' the drives that the disks you have are DD by sticking a bit of tape over a hole. 
So in fact, you can use HD disks as DD disks in any drive, if you 'transform' their personality with a bit of tape.

I understand that the magnetism issue may cause HD floppies to fail faster than DD floppies when used with a DD drive, BUT in my experience, you can expect a 30% failure rate on 10 to 20 year old floppies anyway, so you need an alternative way of storing information. 

I have a dedicated DOS box (Windows 98 dual-boot) that I use for floppy management using a utility called CopyQM. So I regard the floppy image library I have on there as authoritative, and any floppies as 'temporary' storage. 

It took me a few hours of hard slog to get everything to work, but I can manage all the floppies I need using any sort if 3.5in disk (DD/HD) for both my DSS1 and MV-30

Many thanks to Glen Stegner for the information he has shared at: 
http://glenstegner.com/dss1 



The A529 was discontinued about 8 years ago due to problems, I did not know that Larry Hendry passed away in an accident that's too bad. He and I worked to gather on the first DSS1/DSSM drives, in fact he was my beta tester. 

Larry was a great resource on the DSS1. His website seems to have survived him: Another one of the unsung heroes that help keep old synths alive.



http://glenstegner.com/dss1 

 
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