s950 floppy drive replacement

[squatski]

Hi, I have a dead floppy drive for an s950
I bought on ebay and disk drive modified to work in an Amiga. I was told they work with s950's. I've taken everything apart on the s950 and swapped drives over.

but I'm still getting 'OOPS BAD DATA ON DISK!' when trying to format a new floppy. (tried about 10 floppies). I've taken the new drive apart and given the heads an iso wipe down. Still the same problem.

Don't know of any floppy drive tech heads are on here but is it because of the pin layouts? this is what mine looks like at the minute. 2 out of the 3 things I understand and are (I think) correct for the s950

[madtheory]

Return that floppy drive for a refund, and go with either a Lotharek HxC or search on here for how to flash the SDfloppy yourself, save about €80.

[Vxster]

I thought about going the HxC route but I still have a lot of stuff on floppy disk...I'll still need to get the samples off. Mine is currently still working so maybe I should be doing that!

[Rasputin]

I bought on ebay and disk drive modified to work in an Amiga. I was told they work with s950's. I've taken everything apart on the s950 and swapped drives over.

Akai S950 has to be:

pin 2 - density
pin 34 - ready
and drive ID 0

Amiga is drive ID 0, so that's correct. But pin 2 is diskchange, not density.

If this "Amiga" drive is a standard IBM PC drive which has been modified then the pin 2 mod should be undone to revert it to density select.

The drive ID should remain, and the pin 34 mod is correct because Amiga needs a ready signal on pin 34 just like the S950, whereas the original drive would have been diskchange.

In other words: Unsolder the blue wire on pin 2 (don't bother unsoldering it from the multi-pin IC!) and tape up the loose end securely.

[squatski]

Hi thanks for the reply Rasputin
OK I did that and it still said 'oops bad disk'

I soldered off that pin 2 wire, sadly not long after it broke off from the chip
I've taken a closer photo, it's an Alps DF354H071C (no idea if that's HD or DD, I was sort of hoping it could do both seeing as that's what the s950 was supposed to be able to do in the first place)


I'm suspicious of ALL 3 things,
- the solder around DS0 looks a bit weak? I might add more blob of solder around it?
- I'm not 100% sure RD is ready. shouldn't it be "RDY"?
- my biggest concern is above pin2 there's a scratch over the track, pretty sure I didn't do that... was that done by the modifier to block the original path? it looks like it goes to DNS (where the gap hasn't been bridged yet) is that the density select thingy?

[squatski]

oh and in repsonse to the gotek/hxc. I love the idea of it and that people do it, but I'm all about the floppies! I just find them more magical for some reason lol

I do actually have a gotek drive that I may one day install in one of my samplers but just not the 950

[Rasputin]

- my biggest concern is above pin2 there's a scratch over the track, pretty sure I didn't do that... was that done by the modifier to block the original path? it looks like it goes to DNS (where the gap hasn't been bridged yet) is that the density select thingy?

Correct on both assumptions.

I forgot to mention that, as I wasn't staring at it in person. But you have to restore that trace to get the density signal back to pin 2.

[madtheory]

Is that how the soldering looked after you opened it up? Definitely look for a refund. Seller has done a poor job of repair there (if indeed it was the seller whodunnit!!!).

Dear god I do not miss floppy discs LOL I used to quietly freak out every time I used my TX16W at gigs. I always had spares in triplicate, and a few jokes lined up for the several minutes it would take to fill up 1.5MB of RAM. Those were the days LOL!

I thought about going the HxC route but I still have a lot of stuff on floppy disk...I'll still need to get the samples off. Mine is currently still working so maybe I should be doing that!

It's probably quicker to image the disks on your PC, unless you have a SCSI device hooked up to your S950. MIDI SDS is probably no good because you won't get the programs with tuning, mapping, envelopes, filter, etc. etc.

Actually, SCSI on the S950 would be the way to go. The floppy emulator works at the same speed as a real floppy drive (i.e. sloooooooow) whereas the SCSI works super fast on SD compared to a spinning disc.

[squatski]

ok news update for those who care lol.

I basically just sort of gave up. I'm trying to be a music producer not a technician and I was spending all my free time (and I have little free time) pulling my hair out why I couldn't get this damn thing to work. respect to anyone who cracks it.
I made a total pigs ear solder job trying to get more solder blob on that DF0 bit and it took away the original solder that I think is supposed to gel it together for a firm fit so the jump wire wouldn't attach. Even before I messed up I did manage to get that pin 2 attached ok to pin 20 on the chip which was its original path (the density thing?) AND IT STILL MOANED WITH "error bad data"

ANYWAY I DON'T CARE ABOUT THE DAMN technical anymore, found some bloke on ebay basically just selling new s950 drives.. no idea if it's modded ones or oldschool ones with the simple jumpers on the back (the latter I think)
but yeah - ebay prices, don't care I don't want hunched over fiddling about with microscopic circuit boards and wasting time.

so I basically got about 3 floppy drives going spare, might just ebay them up and say you can have the lot for 1 pound lol. I want them out the house but I feel horrible about just binning them. pieces of history that!

[madtheory]

I know the feeling. Sometimes the vintage stuff is just not worth it, it gets in the way of actual production. Put it down to a learning experience.

[squatski]

Right I'm gonna keep this thread bumped for as long as possible until a clear answer is given to why the s950 drive is so special.
There's a load of dead threads on Gearslutz regarding the s950 drive.
I'm still waiting on the ebay drive, the dude's had some issue's confirming it will work because of the whole density thing. we shall see.

I actually took out my working s1000 disk drive (a Teac with jumpers) and put it in the s950, tried both the s950 cable and the cable that was in the s1000. annnnndd, it did the pretend-formatting. So it formats a HD disks, then you found out it actually DIDN'T format it. (and it won't read confirmed s950 formatted HD disks)
Put a bit of tape over the hole to fake a DD disk, and it formats to 35%? not sure if that's correct or not. How did we get 35% if it's a filled a DD disk.... does it secretly know I faked it and it knows it's REALLY a HD disk?

Anyway, if this new drive doesn't work I'm gonna go back to the drawing board with modding these. Is it that Alps drives are the only trusted brand with akai? what's the deal with Alps?
The original alps drive in the s950 is a 'dfp723d14b' .... yeah good look finding one of them on ebay!! The only Alps drives that ever seem to come up are the df3x drives which I think are modern PC drives, certainly drives that have ds1 setup as standard anyway.
but I might just get a modern alps drive... and try again with the RDY, DS0, and Destiny... I get the Ready Signal thing, and I get the DS0/DS1 thing, what I don't get is the density thing and how to look for it on the board... it would mean I'd have to research custom chip pinout schematics and there's hardly any about cause not enough people care lol

[squatski]

I wish that Sébastien Ligez dude hadn't gone AWOL. he was the ONLY man in the world that understood the s950 floppy. I bought from him before and it worked straight away out the parcel with no problems... that was my old s950... I have a new s950 now.
On his site there's actually brands of floppie drives that he modded with success:
SAMSUNG SFD321B/ICL
SAMSUNG SFD321B/LE
SAMSUNG SFD321B/LFDWW TA
TEAC FD-235HFA549 (no so much a mod, just confirmed jumper settings)
YE-DATA YD-702D-6537D
YE-DATA YD-702D-6538D

http://floppy.shugart.free.fr/page.php? ... /index.htm
but the samsung links are dead which is a shame.

Oh and this is a picture of the chaos in my room trying out MANY floppy drives with the s950, I must have about 15+ of the damn things

[squatski]

ok the YE-DATA YD-702D-6537D one looks promising. The mod diagram is clear. Also there happens to be a couple for sale on ebay. Never heard of 'Ye Data' though.

[squatski]

well, I thought it would be an easy mod, until I looked closer

[squatski]