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Backpack Floppy Drives

k2x4b524[ said:
found a little gotcha with these backpack drives, if you try to run a combo drive like the TEAC FD-505, the wall wart CANNOT supply enough to power the spindle on the 5.25" and the backplate will get really hot, my question here is, CAN we run a 12v supply with it if the polarity is right? or will that fry the onboard circuitry
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The ideal solution would be a +5/+12 VDC supply that supplies the drive/drives directly. As far as the Backpack electronics themselves, that's a little complicated because there have been several design changes of these units over the years.

The type being sold on eBay was the last incarnation of the drives; a switching power supply that puts out +5VDC in the form of a "wall wart" is used. There, the neatest solution is to use the +5 from your drive supply. Simple.

Earlier versions used a transformer-style "wall wart" that, depending on the vintage, put out either 9VAC or 15VAC. The 15VAC models supplied +12 and +5 to the drive; later models supply only +5. Inside the backpack unit, there is a rectifier, filter and voltage regulator(s). It's probably fine to put +12 from your drive supply in; ISTR that the older BP units used a bridge rectifier as input, so polarity of the input if you use DC is irrelevant.

There are even older versions of these that use a metal case and a non-removable signal cable. Fortunately, these use the same AC supply as newer units.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
ok, mine is the model 014350, and i KNOW it doesn't supply 12v, my thing is, can i take a 12 or 15 volt with the same plug and polarity and NOT fry the electronics so i don't have to use an external box?
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What's the wall wart that supplies your unit say regarding voltage?
 
The power brick that I use to power drives externally with molex provides 2 amps across both 12v and 5v lines on the molex connector, for reference.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
Output
13.7vac 800Mah

13.7 volts is plenty, but is it not putting out the microamps to drive the 5.25?

Or am i asking too much out of the ole wart
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Probably--and asking a lot of a little aluminum plate as a heatsink for two voltage regulators. Better to use an external power supply. The 5.25" section of an FD505 is rated at something like a 4W power draw.
 
k2x4b524[ said:
Next question, can the backpack CD logic board utilize a hard drive?
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Good question. If they use the same firmware for the CD and the hard drive, maybe so--but you'll probably need different drivers on your PC side. It could also be that the best case is that you'll be able to talk to an ATAPI device only, such as a IDE Zip drive.

Never tried it, myself.
 
nice, that gives me something to work on, i've stuck a DVD reader on it and it works rather well, it is tempting to try a zip or one of my LS-120s in it but if the firmware is for atapi, they might be read only once plugged into the backpack
 
Chuck(G) said:
Run the SETID utility with the DRIVETYPE argument; i.e. SETID DRIVETYPE After setting (or not) the ID, you'll be prompted for the drives on your controller. You can have 2 of them, although the controller can support 4 (I don't know if the firmware will, however).
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I've spent days trying to do what Chuck(G) wrote about: "if you need a parallel 5.25" backpack (for use, not just to have something pretty on the shelf), you can take a standard 5.25" drive (or better yet, a dual 3.5"/5.25" drive)), supply your own power supply to the drive and connect it to the board from a 3.5" Backpack and use it that way. Every Backpack floppy drive has a NVRAM/EEPROM on it to hold configuration information for up to 4 drives. Simply use the SETID utility that comes with the drive and add the command-line switch "/DRIVETYPE"."

When I run SETID it only gives me an option to "Enter the new BACKPACK drive ID (0-99) [59]:" and only allows a number entry so how do I enter "/DRIVETYPE" and what would I enter for drivetype? I also have no idea what number to pick between 0-99.

I'm trying to replace the BackPack 3.25" drive with a Mitsumi 5.25" floppy drive. The 5.25 has power, responds when activated via Explore My Computer, but always returns, "D:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready". I assume its because the drive thinks it is a 3.25. I have no idea how to change that. I'd sure appreciate some HELP!!! THANKS! PS - I have no technical background, only google got me this far.
 
No, you enter the command

SETID DRIVETYPE

which will give you an extended menu.

Also, make sure that the 5.25" drive also has +12V power; later Backpacks have only +5 on the power connector. You may also have to set DS0 for a unit select on the drive--I'll have to check that, as I'm not sure.
 
i ran into this problem aswell, you need to supply the 5.25 with +12volts or it won't work, it will do what you say, DS1 is fine for selection, if you have a dualie drive, even better, those work great. Even a 2.88mb will work with it too if you have one,
 
Thanks! Half way there! Once I finally figured out in Windows 95 I enter a command via Start>Run> then enter exactly "C:\Backpac\setid drivetype" (without the quotes) and click "OK", Setid opened up just as you said once I made no change to BackPack drive ID and hit "Enter" on my keyboard. I was able to make appropriate drive selections for the 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch drives attached to my BackPack which showed up correctly in My Computer - Explore. Unfortunately the Mitsumi D509V3 5.25" drive, which is the one I really need, still responds/activates when double clicked or explored but returns: "E:\ is not accessible. The device is not ready."

The 5.25" drive is powered by the exact same power supply/4 hole cable from my Windows 2000 Desktop. I just reinstalled it on the desktop and verified it is still responding and reading fine on the Desktop. Does attaching the 5.25" to the BackPack with a ribbon cable somehow drain power resulting in the Desktop power supply being insufficient?

I spent last night and today trying all different configurations with the cable ribbon, drive type settings, with and without the 3.5" drive... but the 5.25" still "is not accessible..." with the BackPack.

For what it's worth: My Computer-Explore lists:
[A:] 3 1/2 inch floppy - (this used to be my 3.5" BackPack drive but it does not do anything since I reinstalled the BackPack drivers including the 212 files.)
C: (my Windows 95 hard drive)
[D:] 3 1/2 inch Floppy - always responds regardless of position on ribbon cable or drive type assigned to it. Its the Epson SMD 300 3.5" drive, which came with my backpack.
[E:] 5.25 inch Floppy - responds, does not read/"not accessible"

Any other suggestions are welcome. THANKS!

Chuck(G) said:
No, you enter the command

SETID DRIVETYPE

which will give you an extended menu.

Also, make sure that the 5.25" drive also has +12V power; later Backpacks have only +5 on the power connector. You may also have to set DS0 for a unit select on the drive--I'll have to check that, as I'm not sure.
Click to expand...
 
Have you tried accessing the drive in real DOS mode? (i.e. shutdown to "Restart in MS-DOS Command Prompt"--don't just select the icon, but shutdown.) Also, when booting does BACKPACK.SYS report the drives? (If you need to, modify the MSDOS.SYS file for BOOTGUI=0).
 
In MS-DOS mode I entered: D:dir the 3.5” drive responded each time. After several tries it gave me a list of all the documents on the disk. When I entered E:dir the 5.25" drive responds/lights up but I get “General failure reading drive E:
Abort, Retry, Fail?

When booting line by line I get:
DEVICE= \BACKPAC\BACKPACK.SYS
BACKPACK.SYS Copyright 1994, Micro Solutinos Inc….
The following BACKPACK drives are available:
Drive D: = 3.5 inch 1.4MB
Drive E: 5.25 inch 1.2MB
BACKPACK.SYS is using 13.25K of memory.

I modified the MSDOS.SYS file from BOOTGUI=1 to BOOTGUI=0, restarted my computer and got another confirmation: "The following BACKPACK drives are available"
Drive D: - 3.5 inch 1.4MB
Drive E: - 5.25 inch 1.2MB

Should I toss my BACKPACK in the river yet?
 
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ATTRIB -R -H -S MSDOS.SYS

The command form is DIR E:; not E:DIR. Like a lot of other command-line based system, the general form is always verb object or verb options object

"General failure" is usually returned when (a) the media isn't formatted, or (b) it's not in a format that DOS can understand; e.g. it doesn't have a DOS boot sector on it.

Try formatting a blank diskette; if you have a DSHD blank, you should be able to format it using FORMAT E:; if it's a DSDD blank, then you can format it using FORMAT E: /4.
 
Chuck, Thanks for more ideas. In MS-DOS mode again I entered your correct command form but got the same result - the 3.5" worked great and generated a list of all the files on the diskette. But the 5.25" gave "General Failure reading Drive E:" I also hoped it was a diskette formatting problem as you mentioned, but I've been checking that, trying various diskettes throughout the process. My only 5.25" DOS diskette is the "backpack diskette drive,Version 2.11". It opens up and reads just fine when the same Mitsumi D509V3 5.25" inch drive is installed in my Windows 2000 desktop, so I'm pretty sure its not a formatting problem. I need the 5.25 drive to read diskettes on a Windows 95 or 98 computer so I can use cp/m to dos conversion software to convert all my old Kaypro 2 cp/m 2.2, Wordstar 3.0 files to Dos and then to MS Word, that's why I've been working so hard on this. I'm pretty much out of ideas on using my BackPack.
 
Well, you're not going to read/write CP/M diskettes using a Backpack drive--the drivers tie into DOS formats. On a different thread some time ago, I did include the code for a driver, but you'd have a lot of code to write to get to where you need to be.

However, you talk about using it on a Win2K box, so something must work. Any possibility of booting DOS from a floppy/CD/flash drive and using the 2K box?

(I usually keep a 32MB DOS partition on most of my systems for such emergencies)
 
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