Problem getting a 5.25 inch Panasonic JU-595 313 to work...

[mazex]

Hi,

I am in a bit of a Catch 22 scenario.

I am trying to get my Victor 286a back on track after loosing the BIOS settings when updating to a new battery. The Victor Diagnostics Disk is needed to set the BIOS and I REALLY should have copied it as it worked last year. But I do get a read error when starting the exe to change HDD params. Managed to find a TD0 image of the Diagnostic disk in a dark corner of an old french FTP site and convert that to FDI->IMA so I am all set.

But... When moving the Panasonic JU-595 313 drive to my next oldest computer (a P200 MMX) I don't get the drive to work. From what I understand the JU-595 is a 96TPI (80 track) drive so the correct setting should be 5.25 1.2M? I only have 360k or 1200k in the Award BIOS. In POST I get an error 40 when setting it to 360k and it POSTs OK with 1.2 so that seems right. In POST the light goes on and it does a read "sounding right". But in Windows 2000 when I insert a disk the light goes on after closing the lid - and it does a short read and then nothing happens. Windows 2000 waits for 10 seconds with no error and then says "Insert a disk in drive A"

Any thoughts? Annoyingly I do not have any other computer with a 34-pin FDD controller...

 

[Chuck(G)]

Try installing it as a 3.5" 720K drive and formatting a diskette in it. If that works, you have your answer--it's not the 1.2M version but the 720K

Just a thought.

 

[mazex]

Thanks for the advice.

Unfortunately it did not work. But I googled some more and eventually found out that the Panasonic JU-595 is one of the rare double sided quad density drives with 720kb (with 80 thracks and 96DPI like the 1.2M) so that is right - but my P200 does not accept setting it to 3.5 720kb. The only way to pass POST without error 40 (award BIOS) is to set it to 5.25 1.2M.

http://www.mfarris.com/floppy/panasonic.html

So - it would be nice to have a BIOS that supports that - or find out if some of the jumpers could make it go to 48TPI and then work as a 360kb drive instead? Cannot find a map for the jumpers on this specific drive though. The 475 manual references a 1E jumper that sets 48 or 96 TPI for that but I have no 1E jumper. And that seems to be soldered on the 475?

My jumpers: