[sebhc] Diskette Drives

[Carroll Waddell]

Carroll Waddell wrote:

> Does anyone know about diskette head alignment?
> I got some Tandon TM100 drives off EBAY. They are single sided and 
> look like they should work, but diskettes written on the normal H17 
> won't read on the Tandon. Is there some different head alignment or 
> something?
> Carroll
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I've been playing with diskette drives all afternoon.  First, I'm 
working with hard sector diskettes. The diskettes are new that Patrick 
Rigney got for us last year.
I have 2 of the Siemens drives that Heath sold for the H17. They work 
fine. I also have a Shugart (some model) that also works fine. I bought 
a TRS-80 that had 2 full height Tandon TM100-1A drives. 
In the past, I've used drives from an IBM PC. These will work fine IF 
YOU CREATE THE DISKETTES ON THE PC DRIVE. Diskettes created on the 
Siemens drives cannot be read by an IBM PC drive and vice versa.
At any rate, I've tried diskettes created in the Siemens Drives and the 
IBM drives on the Tandon. Neither Tandon drive will read any diskette I 
have.
I haven't torn it open yet, but I bought a Kaypro Portable with 2 drives 
in it, but I think these are the Tandon drives also, but not sure.
Of course, BOTH of the Tandon drives could be bad.

I have 1 Siemens drive that smokes when power is applied to it. The 
motor control card is smoking. I'm going to strip it down to the bare 
PCB and rebuild it, but that will take time.

Basically, I'm just trying to see what kind of diskette drives we can 
use in the H17.
Carroll
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