New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Preferably one that does not sound like you're torturing a cat.

If it's 3.5" (full height ok), it spins, isn't crazy loud, I'm interested
Buying from the US will cost me quite a few pennies for an untested one, so if you have a Miniscribe or similar out the back that is on the quiet side - let me know. Will pay extra for a Seagate and/or extra again for 40Mb, but Miniscribe, Fuji, and 20Mb etc are fine by me. Going in to a laptop with lots of drive types (usual 10-80Mb affair).

Just posting quickly before my credit card uncontrollably jumps on ebay.

Ordered a replacement, $99NZD should have it in two weeks.
Same brand / type as the original, which is good, but 20Mb instead of 40Mb.

But if anyone has MFM/RLL drives, I'm always keen to purchase for a respectable price. $100 hurts, but 40-60.
Also will pay $50 for a Toshiba 26 pin dark grey 1.44 FDD - even if it's still inside a dead Toshiba T series (T3200, T5200 etc). Best I could get the ebay guy down to was $89 + postage - which is just painful for a floppy drive :S couldn't quite do it.

I've got one I'm going to stick on Trademe probably Thursday or Friday. It's a Micropolis HDA No. 0410077 Interface ESDI Capacity 382 MB. I've powered it up and it spins, no worrying clicks and about as noisy as hard drives I remember from that era.

Will post an announcement in the Trademe section when I list.

Awesome. Generally 'if it spins you wins', so yours sounds like a winner

I have 3 x 300Mb ESDI drives, but only one controller! (and while it supports 3 drives, AIX is being difficult). Mine are 5.25" full height though and I can't use them on my MFM or RLL machines. Although.... if I ordered an ESDI controller, I could fit one to the IBM AT, which would free up a NEC D5126H 20Mb hmmm

Did you get given the drive on it's own, or did it come inside something?

It's a full sized drive. It did come in something but I missed it and it was stripped out. someone bought it out to me after the machine was pulled apart. So there is a chance it's still a goer.

Ah bugger, controllers are hard to find, was wondering if you might still have it to go with the drive.
But thanks to a contact over at VCF, I do have a nice ESDI controller heading my way - so I'll bid unless someone fights me for it

Ugh.

My replacement 3.5" MFM drive arrived last night all they way from the US.
Heads stuck to the platters like you wouldn't beleive. Got it free, heads still attached, self tests pass but it wont write.

So if anyone has a spare 3.5" MFM or RLL drive - that isn't audible on the other side of your house - please let me know!
Happy to trade if there is something specific you want that I might have, otherwise cash

Bugger,

I have plenty of spare IDE ones lying about but that's not much help. All my MFMs are in my machines.

If only this laptop had ISA slots! I could pop in the XTIDE BIOS + IDE controller as secondary but just one proprietary expansion connector sadly.

It's booting off the Miniscribe (from the ITT Xtra - was seized originally), but that makes it a laptop that you can hear on the other side of the house.

Just to make last night more fun, my Taxan Supervision went pop with a big flash in the middle of a hard drive format. (Bright side, is I got my card configured for CGA mode finally).

And one turns up on trademe... sweet.
Fingers crossed this one actually spins and isn't too loud, the interwebs tells me that Rodime was there with Miniscribe - cheap.

Edit: not only does it run perfectly, but it was an exact match (CHS wise) to the original 45Mb drive. Laptop is 100% now.