EMAX II Internal Floppy issues

[mrhybreed]

Hello all. I am new to this forum and I am an EMAX II owner. My EMAX II was functioning properly up until a couple of months ago when the external SCSI Syquest Zip Drive that I was using finally stopped working. The internal floppy drive had not worked for some time, so being without an external drive now, and considering that the keyboard will not boot up at all, I have decided to try and remedy the floppy drive.

The internal floppy drive is powering up when the keyboard is turned on, however it will not read any disks. You can hear the drive spinning (and see the drive's light come on) for a short time but then it stops. I have most of the original disks that came with the unit and this is the case with all of them. My initial diagnosis was that the floppy drive was simply faulty, so I decided to swap it for a drive that I had in my PC (a much newer floppy drive). The EMAX II would still not read any of the disks and thusly not boot up. After reading some threads in this forum and considering the age of the original floppy drive, I now believe that the new floppy drive is probably not compatible with the EMAX II. The new unit is either too fast or simply not the right format.

Can anyone confirm that my thinking/hypotheses are on the right track? If so, can I assume that will need a "new" original EMAX II floppy drive? I am new to the "guts and internal workings" of the EMAX II, as it has always functioned properly. So if anyone can shed some light on this issue I would be very grateful! Any and all information would be greatly appreciated! 

Thanks,

mrhybreed

[kdk]

My understanding is that the original floppy drives in the Emax II are Mitsubishi Full Height 3.5" drives, models MF353B - 12 UJ or MF353BA - 12U.

Syquest EZflier 135MB drives are easily found on ebay for about $25. Perhaps replacing that would be easier?

Kirk

[kdk]

This is from the Yahoo Emax group -
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/emax/conversations/topics/3252

The Mitsumi D359T3 is compatible with the Emax II. I have successfully
 installed one into mine, the jumpers are relatively easy to access
 (right in the back) - mine works with "SW" jumpered and set to ID0.
 from a pin perspective, in the format:
 
1 2 3 4 5 6
 7 8 9 10 11 12
 
10 and 11 should be jumpered, and 3 and 9 should be jumpered. There's
 a legend next to the pins anyway, so it should be pretty obvious.
 
This drive is easy to find on ebay and very cheap. It's not
 half-height or whatever form factor the original drive is, so you'd
 have to make a bracket - but it works quite well so far.

[mrhybreed]

Thanks very much Kirk! That's good info!

[audioaddictz]

found this pdf of jumper settings for various floppy drives

http://freaknet.org/asbesto/roba/diskettes-jumpers.pdf

hope its useful to some of you