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August 06, 2005

Fun with Akai MPC-60 floppy drives

Turned on my Akai MPC-60 this past week and the floppy drive was dead. The original drive was a long discontinued 720k Mitsubishi. Opening up my other Akai gear I discovered Teac FD-235HF models. Doing some snooping around the net it turns out there were more than a dozen variations of this drive, however Teac still makes one model that should work just fine, the FD-235HFA529. This is still available at a number of online retailers. Being impatient I decided to visit Weird Stuff instead of waiting for a mailorder drive to show up. I picked up a FD-235HF3240 with even more jumper options than the current model for $4.95. While the jumper arrangement of the 3240 appears similar to the 5636 model, they are in fact totally different. It tooks some serious digging to turn up the jumper settings by I finally found the information I needed in a 1994 usenet posting. Seeing how I had some difficulty in collecting Teac drive information I decided to take some pictures before closing the MPC60 up.

Jumper settings for the Teac FD-235HF3240

A1 - B1		DS0	Drive select 0
B1 - C1		DS1	Drive select 1
A2 - B2		DS2	Drive select 2
B2 - C2		DS3	Drive select 3
A4 - B4		RY34	Ready output on Pin 34
B4 - C4		DC34	Disk Change output on Pin 34
C3 - C4		DC2	Disk Change output on Pin 2
C4 - D4		DC4	Disk Change output on Pin 4
A3 - B3		HA	density set automatically
B3 - C3		HI2	density set by HD IN on pin 2
C3 - D3		HO2	density (HD OUT) output on pin 2
D3 - D4		HO4	density (HD OUT) output on pin 4
D1 - D2		LHI	---or---
D2 - E2		LHI	HD IN low is high density
D1 - E1		LHO	---or---
E1 - E2		LHO	HD IN high is high density
E2 - F2		HMK	half mask for INDEX/READ-DATA
F3 - G3		NMK	no mask for INDEX/READ-DATA
F1 - G1		IR	LED on when: (Drive Select AND Ready)
G1 - G2		ML	motor on when: (Motor ON AND LED on)
E4 - F4		ACD	disable auto-checking
G3 - G4		REN	disable auto-recalibration
E2 - E3		HF	---or---
E3 - E4		HF	must always be in for this version of drive

For the MPC-60 jumper DS0, HI2, RY34, HF, REN, and FG. The drive came jumpered with DS1, HA, DC34, HF, REN, and FG.

Jumper settings for the Teac FD-235HFA529 (also FD-235HF6554 and FD-235HF6573

A1 - B1		DS0	Drive select 0
B1 - C1		DS1	Drive select 1
A2 - B2		DS2	Drive select 2
B2 - C2		DS3	Drive select 3
C3 - D3		REN	disable auto-recalibration
D3 - E3		ACD(a)	disable auto-checking
E3 - F3		ACD(b)	disable auto-checking
D2 - E2		RY34	Ready output on Pin 34
E1 - E2		DC34	Disk Change output on Pin 34
E1 - F1		DC2	Disk Change output on Pin 2
G1 - G2		HA	density set automatically
F1 - G1		HI2	density set by HD IN on pin 2
F1 - F2		HO2	density (HD OUT) output on pin 2
F3 - G3		IR	LED on when: (Drive Select AND Ready)

For the MPC-60 jumper DS0, HI2, RY34, ACD(b), and FG. Teac also recommends bridging S14 on the bottom side of the drive controller to force 720k mode.

Posted by cary at August 6, 2005 11:12 PM