PLI SuperFloppy 2.8

[Charlieman]

I have just acquired one of these drives. It's a small SCSI box wrapped around an auto eject 2.8MB floppy drive that was sold early/mid 1990s for Macs and NeXT boxes. I have not found any info on how much the two versions differed -- I suspect it was down to the software bundle.

I've tried it with a PCI PowerMac running System 7.5.5 and Mac OS 8.1, plus a whole bunch of SCSI formatters. Alas, I don't have a real 2.8MB floppy so I'm trying it out with 1.4MB floppies (Mac formatted, known working). Basically I am not getting anywhere with generic formatters, so I'd appreciate any help locating the original software. SilverLining has a go at formatting a floppy disk (at 1.2MB) but nothing else even tries.

Any pointers or should I reserve it for the next time I wrestle with my NeXT?

 

[protocol7]

There's some PLI utils on the Mac Driver Museum. Worth a try.

 

[Charlieman]

The PLI utilities at Mac Driver Museum are for the earlier Syquest drives, alas.

I thought that I had broken my drive after cracking it open to take a few photos of the internals. I cracked it open again, ensured that everything was seated (the ROM is the only socketed DIP chip), twiddled about and it partially works again.

* The floppy mechanism is labelled Sony MP-F40W-1Y. It uses a 20 pin ribbon cable and has no supplementary power. It is an auto inject/eject drive. I have not compared physical size to a conventional 1.4MB mechanism.

* The physical ROM carries a paper label: "V1.4 PLI©NXT288".

* The board is silk screened "PLI Turbo Floppy".

* There is a square socketed chip next to the silk screen label that I cannot identify because the marks are so indistinct.

* Mac SCSI utilities identify the ROM as version 1.00. A couple of formatters have a go at formatting a 1.4MB floppy disk and the result is a 1.2MB not-especially-useful disk. I presume that the formatters are assuming block/sector/MFM parameters.

I have my own thoughts (about which I will be quiet initially) and welcome yours.

 

[Dennis Nedry]

Have you tried the Applied Engineering SCSI floppy drive driver at the Mac Driver Museum? Very unlikely to work but you never know.

 

[protocol7]

Did you try the PLI formatter? I know the link says the tools came with a Syquest drive, but there's a chance it might still work. It appears to be a fairly generic SCSI format tool.

I'm guessing the onboard ROM contains the driver? Maybe it only contains a NeXT driver (judging by it's label) in which case, a Mac driver may still be needed.

 

[Charlieman]

PLI Formatter: This is a rebadge of a third party formatter. It is very similar to a MicroNet formatter in its layout.

AE Drive Drivers: The Mac Driver Museum description is incorrect. The AE drives all used the floppy port to the best of my knowledge.

Onboard ROM: My bet is that it is just stores parameter and declaration data. Many SCSI utils can read it and a couple of formatters have now produced 1.2MB MFM floppies for me.

I think that the paper label is misleading and that the same ROM was used for Mac and NeXT versions of the drive. I really need the software for this one to understand it.