[sebhc] Shugart 400L Drive

Barry Watzman Watzman at neo.rr.com
Thu Oct 12 21:17:53 CDT 2006


The original SA400, as you note, was certified for only 35 tracks.  I'm
guessing that the "L" model was certified for 40 (even the 35 track model
might have actually worked on all 40 tracks).

Other than that, the drive was generally similar to the Siemens/Wangco drive
(the H17 drive).  However, the stepping mechanism in the SA400 was EXTREMELY
slow, and I mean ***EXTREMELY***.  This could be your problem.  Also, the
drive may have had more jumper options, and may have required a different
set of jumpers for (among other things) hard sector operation.  So those are
two areas where there might be problems.


-----Original Message-----
From: sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org [mailto:sebhc-bounces at sebhc.org] On Behalf Of
Mark Garlanger
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2006 9:52 PM
To: sebhc
Subject: [sebhc] Shugart 400L Drive

Does anyone know if I should be able to use the Shuart 400L floppy as
a replacement for the H-17-1 drives? I'm having some problems with a
pair I got off of ebay. I thought I would be able to use them since
they appear to have the same specs as the Wangco and Seimens drives
with just a different door latch. I had read that they have 40 tracks
instead of the 35 that the older 400 model had. When I received the
drives they had an additional 2" x 2.5" board (with a CAP, a diode,
several resistors, a 74LS86 and a 74LS00) which converted a twenty pin
connector into the standard edge connector and power cable. I removed
this and was able to properly connect it in my H17 case to my
hard-sectored controller. The id was set to 1 (third drive), another
drive is the last drive on the cable and has the terminating resistor
pack. When I try to boot from them, the light comes on, but I receive
a '?Boot error' message. It doesn't make any clicks like my other
drives do. The disk is spinning, but I don't hear any head movement.
This behavior is the same on both drives. Does anyone know if these
drives are not compatible with the heath controller? Or maybe some
other setting is off, both drives did come with the ID set to 1, but
one drive had a '1' sticker on the front and the other had a '2'
sticker? Or maybe I got two bad drives?

Thanks,
   Mark
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