lisa floppy drive

[nahuelmarisi]

I've been trying to find a suitable replacement for my lisa 2's floppy drive (it didn't come with one).

I have tried an SE 800k and a Plus 400k floppy drive. What happens is that the drive keeps trying to eject a floppy (even is there's nothing there) all the time. SO it's constantly doing the eject noise. Both drivers work fine on their machines.

Could it be that my lisa's floppy drive controller is damaged? or it just doesn't support mac 800k drives (even if it recognises them as 400k)?

Any solutions? or is my lisa doomed as a lisaquarium?

 

[bluekatt]

i have no experience what so ever with lisa's but i'd say try a floppy drive from a 128k mac before you discount the floppy controller

and do look for na axternal 128 k floppy drive

no need to maul a working 128 k

 

[equant]

or is my lisa doomed as a lisaquarium?

Please don't. Have some patience, you may be in it for the long haul, but it's worth it to stick with the plan of making it more of a computer instead of less.

Plus, most people's aquarium efforts end up looking like shite.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

Apparently a 400k drive of a 128k or 512k mac could work. However it will be nearly impossible to find one, less alone a lisa one. I suppose a 800k disk rom could also be useful.

 

[The Macster]

or is my lisa doomed as a lisaquarium?

Please don't. Have some patience, you may be in it for the long haul, but it's worth it to stick with the plan of making it more of a computer instead of less.

Plus, most people's aquarium efforts end up looking like shite.

Even a dead Lisa would probably fetch a good price on eBay so, yes, that would be a bad idea.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

i didn't mean it literally.

I could never really be bothered in making an aquarium, less alone taking care of fish

I meant that if it was doomed to be unused, just being a museum item.

It works fine, it's just the floppy and Hd missing. But that makes it useless unfortunately. I'll try to find one though, I'm not going to give up yet. Otherwise i'll probably sell it, i like having machines I can use on my collection. I just thought it would be easier to get it working with a mac drive.

Update: I-ve been reading the sun remarketing do it yourself guide to the lisa. It mentions that you need a rom update to use the 800k mac floppy drive (it does however not mention if it is necessary if I want to use the drive as a 400k one).

it mentions that if the drive continuously ejects (like in my case) i should remove pins 9 and 20. The problems is, which pins are 9 and 20. In other words, where do I start counting from?

 

[sunder]

It's fixable. You can't replace a Lisa's 400K floppy drive with an 800K drive directly.

If your drive continually ejects, that's a symptom that you're using an 800k drive in a Lisa with a 400K I/O ROM. To fix that you'd need to remove pins 9 and 20 from the drive. I don't recommend that.

Instead try to fix the original drive if you can.

Here's more info about Lisa floppy repair:

http://lisafaq.sunder.net/lisafaq-hw-floppy_lube.html

 

[nahuelmarisi]

I can't actually fix the drive because i don't have one! The machine didn't come with one. I guess the previous owner threw it away for some reason.

However I'm not planning in removing the pins from the drive, that's too risky, i'm just planning in removing it from a cable I have. I have more than one replacement cable so if it doesn't work it's no big deal.

The question is, which ones are pins 9 and 20?

 

[sunder]

It's a standard pin connector, much like those used on PC floppies, but a different pin count. One row is odd, the other even, pin 1 is red, count from there. It's also marked on the drive end, so once you get a drive, you can work from there to find the right lines.

 

[sunder]

also, with any hope, you still have the "Pepsi" board in there. This is an interface that takes a cable from inside the Lisa (mates with the motherboard on the other end of the cage) to the card on the left hand side of the drive cage, from that card, another cable goes to the actual floppy drive.

This was used to convert from the Twiggy floppies to the 3.5" 400K Sony drives.

If you do wind up ordering an X/ProFile ask John Woodall if he has any 400K floppy drives to sell, he might.

 

[oldappleguy]

Ok I have the lisa part you need, but i am in the usa. I don't know how

or what it would cost to ship to England. I have the hard drive and 400k

floppy. I also have the 800k floppy rom chip, but i do not think it is compatible with the lisa operating system.

 

[nahuelmarisi]

The interface you mention is the lisa lite from what I can gather. And i don't have that since my lisa is a 2/10, which has a different I/O board. Meaning that you don't need the adapter to plug in 3 1/2" drives.

Update: I tried removing pins 9 and 20 (assumming i got them right) and the eject sound stopped. But it appears either to read very slowly or not read at all. In other words, it doesn't work. I guess that without an 800k rom it's not really possible to use an 800k drive.

I sent you a pm oldappleguy, so far you're my only hope!

 

[Mac128]

Check this out, I posted in your other thread before I saw this:

http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=31541#31541

Also see my detailed instructions for cutting the cable (never a good idea to cut the pins on the drive, cables are much easier to replace):

http://www.mac128.com/ "Formatting 800K MFS Disks With 64K ROMs"

If you cut the wrong pins that could account for the slow access. You also need the proper 400K formatted disks and the correct software with the correct interleave. If I understood on the brilliant Sunder site, the Lisa software used a different interleave than the Mac software. Make sure you read the LisaFAQ thoroughly when creating your disks.