speaking of 3.5" floppies, is 720K R.I.P.?

[Fred Cisin]

On Mon, 2 Feb 2009, Chris Elmquist wrote:
> yes... I studied the OPA and OPB jumpers, hooked them up, and no joy.
> The actual density selector switch or optical sensor is missing from
> the drives I received.  So, there is no way for it to know that the
> low-density media has been installed.  It needs this input along with
> the density select coming from PIN 2 on the interface to decide what
> mode to go into.  If all the parts were there, then the PIN 2 would
> choose between 2.0 MB and 1.6 MB (raw) modes (and actually change the
> RPM to 360 when going to 1.6 MB mode) but that would only happen if a
> low-density disk could be detected.

Wow. The problem is not the missing switch - that can obviously be
jumpered. The first problem is that your drive does not HAVE a low density
mode. When they removed the switch, they also changed it from "high v low"
modes (2.0 v 1.0 raw) to "high density mode" v "NEC high density mode"
(which would not use that switch anyway.

> So, I think they have cheaped out on us with these particular drives.
> I mean, they are cheap to start with ($7 ea) but this appears to be an
> extreme situation.  I think they can only do high density, 1.44MB format.

and with some jumpering 1.3M Japanese high density


Are Teac drives getting that hard to come by?