Yahoo Groups archive

Vintage Synth Repair

Index last updated: 2026-04-28 23:41 UTC

Thread

Anyone Replace/Repair Roland JV-50 Floppy Drive?

Anyone Replace/Repair Roland JV-50 Floppy Drive?

2011-10-18 by Mr LongWind

I recently got a Roland JV-50 with a broken floppy drive. When accessed it just spins round and it's power led lights up. The original drive is practically non-existent and when available at places such as eBay way out of price range or impossible to win. The original drive is vinatge Chinon 357 DDS 720 byte. 

I have read extended stories of people replacing it with similar drives but more so some have taken a modern HDD drive and tweaked a floppy drive cable and soldered ends together or modified the drive to work with the JV-50. Others have taken similar JV series synths and retrofitted them with the newer USB flash drives. I made attempt to modify a floppy cable but cut too many of the delicate wires and my skills with something like that are thin. 

I was wondering if anyone here has worked on a JV-50 or similar? I am not a noob with stuff like this nor an expert but usually can achieve results when possible.

-Jon

Move to quarantaine

This moves the raw source file on disk only. The archive index is not changed automatically, so you still need to run a manual refresh afterward.