![]() Internally, the connector is stuck to this small control-board and i suspected that it might be worthwhile to source a standard Mitsumi D353F2 unit and then swap these boards between them? Would it work? What did i have to loose (you guessed right. Naturally, IBM did not seem to just use a bog standard Mitsumi unit because in the IBM branded version, the connector is of the protruding kind with pins (which then "snapped" to the laptop) while the standard unit has this flat-cable connector. What the Mitsumi original unit looks like:Īnd here is what the IBM branded unit looks like: ![]() Googling for that comes up with nothing, but lo and behold, apparently Mitsumi has a model just called "D353F2" (googling for this will give quite many hits). I immediately started to search for the various FRUs given by this page:īut failed miserably to source a replacement unit (they are rarer than hens teeth).įast forward to the current time and i took a closer look on the drive and i noticed the Mitsumi stamp on it - the unit is actually manufactured by Mitsumi and (in the IBM shroud) the model is called "D353FE2". The closest I've seen to such is this article from Chris Covell, which has a photo of the innards, but the disk drive appears to be enclosed in a metal box.Revival of a 365E floppy drive unit - Part 1Ībout 2 year ago while i was trying to replace the belt on the Thinkpad 365E slim floppy unit (IBM calls them FRU 41H8387/41H7444 depending on if they are internal or external in a case) i unfortunately snapped one of the read-heads off (due to temporary "sausage fingers" :) ). Anything else is purely speculative/anecdotal (including my own above theory). Were the drive drives in said kiosk *actually better quality*, or is it simply that the kiosks resided in department stores which were air conditioned (proper humidity/temperature balance), thus the innards lasted longer? Maybe they WERE better quality - the only way to know for sure would be to have an actual hardware engineer do a teardown of both a Disk Writer kiosk as well as an FDS and provide an analysis. This might help explain why Disk Writer kiosks seem to be of "better quality". Japanese homes are not known for being spacious, things tend to be optimally positioned/placed to fit perfectly in small nooks and crannies. You've also got "general environment", like where people placed the FDS in their homes during use, if they left the system on for long periods of time (internal heat), etc. I got a new FDS sometime later - same disks, works fine.Īnother thing that certainly would affect the belt would be humidity and environmental changes (consider moving from, say, Okinawa (warm part of Japan's southwestern islands) to Hokkaido (cold part of Japan)). I ended up giving said FDS to Matt Conte (of Nofrendo/cajoNES/nes6502/Nosefart fame), saying "it's yours, I hope you can fix it!" Unsure if he ever did. Adjusting some of the timing pots didn't help either (and I didn't want to mess with those too much anyway, it can actually make things worse if you don't know exactly what is wrong with the system. Cleaning off all the residue was difficult, but even after I did so and replaced it with a supposedly authentic belt, it still didn't work. It wasn't goop - it had melted and become rock hard, and was all over the inside of the system. Once I got it and confirmed it didn't work (always got an error when reading from disks that were definitively good), I opened it up and found the drive belt had literally melted sometime long in the past. The very first FDS I ever had was given to me by a friend living in Japan who found it in a storage closet of a small company he was working for. over time? Lots of things - one of which is heat. ![]() What affects the belt tension, length, etc. ![]() So a lot of FDS drives start acting wonky because of the belt. Replacing belts in the FDS, as I recall, was a common thing. all which affects overall timing (and you already know what happens if you get this wrong). The drives use a very specific kind of belt, made from a somewhat odd or unique rubber (or rubber-like mix), and are *extremely* sensitive to belt length, belt tension, any cruft/junk on the belt motor (this can happen if/when replacing an old belt), etc. Expanding on it a bit more, as well as presenting my own opinion:
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