replacement Floppy drive for Toshiba T6600C not working (26pin Floppy)

[T.Lancer]

Hi there!

I have a Toshiba T6600C "Laptop" with a bad floppy drive (slim drive). The belt has degraded and will not spin the disk anymore.

the Floppy drive originally installed is a

Matsushita EME-278T
It uses a 26pin hard soldered .1" Pitch FFC cable that plugs directly into the motherboard.

the replacement drive is a
Sony MPF820
It uses a standard 26pin 0.05" Pitch FFC cable.

I had to remove the connector of the new drive and solder on new wires directly to attach the the FFC cable donated from the old drive. I checked the pinout by checking the pins for VCC and GND. They were all identical. I figure the older drive uses the standard 26pin layout.


After hooking everything up and powering up the laptop the device tires to read from the floppy drive. it will spin of the disk and the R/W head will start to read the edge of the disk and jump back and forth a bit. However after a short time it will give up and display a "Insert System Disk" error. Pressing enter results in the same failure with the disk spinning and the head moving.


I've double checked my wiring making sure not to have any wires mixed up but it all checks out. the Floppy disk I am using also works in other machines.


so my next obvious question is: what do I do now? I've read about 26 pin and 32 pin differences and something about needing pullup resistors but I'm not sure if there are also different 26pin layouts that my need inverted signals or pull up/down resistors.

I will see if I can check the drive on another device to make sure the drive isn't also dead.

If anyone has any ideas I'd be really happy to hear them.

 

[T.Lancer]

I have tested a different slim line floppy drive. in this case I get I/O disk error. this may be due to my adapter. any help would be appreciated.

 

[stecdose]

All the effort you have taken so far... Maybe it is easier to replace the belt in the original drive?
I used rubber belts from 1€-store in germany to temopararily fix a CD drive's open/close mechanism. It lasted for ~6 months, then it was worn out. Also maybe you'll find a fitting belt in shops like Bauhaus, Obi, Ebay, Amazon, ...

 

[Chuck(G)]

The original Sony 26-pin arrangement was not, sadly, observed by all manufacturers, so you have different versions of the pinout. For what it's worth, later 1/6 height drives (such as the Teac FD05) seem to have the same pinout.

 

[T.Lancer]

thanks for the replies. I've tried rubber bands, but they are all too thick and rub against each other when installed in the drive. I thing the floppy doesn't spin at the right speed so it still won't read.

I found some free time and modified the motherboard connector to except standard 26pin FFC cables so I can test other driver more easily with some FFC adapters. I don't get I/O errors anymore but I still can't read the floppies. it will seem to read then say "insert system disk".

my next attempt will indeed to just buy a new drive at this point. perhaps I will attach a logic analyzer and see what the signals are doing. I also attached the original drive to a USB adapter. here the behavior of the drive is very odd. the R/W head will attempt to move all the way forward and then try to go further, making very nasty sounds. this happens without a floppy inserted. the drive otherwise doesn't seem to even read any disks. this would indicate that perhaps some signals need inverting or some signals may be missing. I found a replacement drive "new and unsed" for 18€. I think I might just try that.