New blog post! It's not easy being green. Neither is being an uncommon orphaned MS-DOS platform with a strange disk format. How will we ever get the Kermit terminal emulator/file transfer utility on this old battered Sanyo MBC-555? #retrocomputing#retrocomputer#msdos#sanyo#floppydisks#gotek
The main issue with the Commodore 8050 and 8250 drives is: How do you get data onto them? The units use 100tpi floppy drives that are incompatible to the regular 48tpi and 96tpi disk drives used in the 1541 and in PC DD and HD drives.
My Commodore 8050 drive died two months ago, while being attached to a IEEE-USB interface. It seems the read-head of drive 0 was driven too far. After fixing that issue, I noticed that drive 1 wasn’t formatting disks — again. Suspecting that the DC motor for the drive might have an issue, I wanted to open it up to do maintenance. A bad decision…
Ok, so I borked one floppy drive (waiting for replacment motor) so maybe this time we can actually repair one? This is a Chinon FZ-357. Actually quite a nice drive. But it is dirty as heck.
The drive does not work, the stepper doesn't move. #retrocomputing#floppydisks
As an addition: If anyone knows a source of high quality drive belts -- please tell me! The ones on these drives still work fine, but as the drive has been sitting around for several decades, there is a dent in the belt. It seems fibre reinforced, which is good. #commodore#commodorePET#floppydisks#retrocomputing
I have another Commodore 1541-II drive here made by Newtronics/Mitsumi that doesn’t work. A quick check of the head wiring reveals that the red coil wire is open. Typical D500 failure mode. #commodore#c64#1541#floppydisks
Does anyone know if cbmformat from OpenCBM support formatting floppies in the CBM 8050? Or do I have to hook it up to the C64 or PET to run the HEADER command? #commodore#pet#c64#floppydisks
Happy 5-25! For today we have a success: The drive 1 of the CBM 8050 is finally formatting disks! Some thorough cleaning of all accessible parts and lubricating (plus de-lubricating the belt and motor axle) helped bring the drive to spin consistently. Such a wonderful machine! FORTY YEARS OLD! #cbm8050#commodore#retrocomputing#floppydisks
In her delightful forward to "Floppy Disk Fever: The Curious Afterlives of a Flexible Medium," Lori Emerson describes people visiting he Media Archaeology Lab. She describes the delight - even for people too young to possibly have nostalgia for using floppies - of using those computers and disks.