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WTB: working 5.25 floppy for a Model 3!

B

bjones

Member
Joined
Mar 18, 2011
Messages
21
Location
Orlando, FL
Sorry for my first post as a newb here being a want to buy, but my drive's door has failed on me and won't stay shut so I can't load disks on my Model 3 :( Alternately, if anyone knows of a fix for when the white pins in the drive latch won't stay in place holding the drive closed i'm all ears. The drive actually works if I hold it down so it's just the latch that is broken but nothing I do keeps it from popping out when I close it.

Does anyone have a working drive around or know of a suitable alternative I could use?

Thanks!
/brian


http://www.rgvac.com
 
Step 1 if you are asking for help:

Edit your profile so people who may be able to, or want to help, know where you are located.

A photo of the busted part might also be of help, just so we all know which bit you need.
 
Sorry, never know just what any given board's protocol is :)

I'll try to snap a pic tomorrow, it's just the latch on the front that has white pins that pop out so the latch won't stay closed.
 
As you said, you're a newb, so I went gentle.
(think yourself lucky MikeS didn't get to you first :) )

It helps to see a photo (of the whole face plate too).
Some of the drives had white pins, some had a metal bar that went all the way through the door, some had black plastic pins as part of the latch/door itself.
You can change the whole front plate easily enough, which might be better if you can't match just the door.
We'll wait for the photo.
 
If it's the drive I think it is, does it work if you just hold it shut? If so, a stopgap measure could be a piece of tape, until you get a better solution. xD
 
You can use any standard PC style DS/DD 5 1/4" floppy drive on a Model III. Also, since the Model III has two internal floppy drives, it's a trivial matter to swap them and use the second one in place of the faulty first drive. You can also use a 720k 3 1/2" floppy drive, although the OS will only use 40 tracks unless you patch it, or have an OS that understands the higher capacity disk drives.

With regards to fixing your existing drive, usually one or the other tab breaks off and pops the mechanism out of the track. Take the drive apart and you'll see how it works. Should be easily repairable with glue, or some creative application of metal pins, a drill, and glue.

-Ian
 
Lorne said:
As you said, you're a newb, so I went gentle.
(think yourself lucky MikeS didn't get to you first :) )
Click to expand...
Pshaw! I'm really a kindly polite and pleasant old geezer most of the time; don't know how some folks could possibly have gotten any other impression...;-)

But I also would have (gently) asked for a location and a picture, make and model number if possible; then again as noted above, with a little reinforcing and a judicious application of an appropriate glue or epoxy these things can usually be repaired fairly easily.

It helps to see a photo (of the whole face plate too).
Some of the drives had white pins, some had a metal bar that went all the way through the door, some had black plastic pins as part of the latch/door itself.
You can change the whole front plate easily enough, which might be better if you can't match just the door.
We'll wait for the photo.
Click to expand...
 
RetroHacker_ said:
You can use any standard PC style DS/DD 5 1/4" floppy drive on a Model III. Also, since the Model III has two internal floppy drives, it's a trivial matter to swap them and use the second one in place of the faulty first drive.
Click to expand...

Which is where the fun begins -- They use the shugart interface so if you can get quarter height drives with the full jumpers you can put four drives on that one cable.

Back when I had a model 3 I had the top two drives as DS/DD 40 track, and the bottom two drives DS/DD 80 track. LDOS 5.1.4 supported the higher track counts and double sided's just fine.
 
I think it was the Tandon drive that we had to replace the door latch mechanism so often that I used to keep a dozen in stock at any given time.

The flip up part was the problem though, not the pivot pins. For some reason, IIRC, the part the pins slipped into on the latch wasn't a solid piece of plastic with a hole in it, but, about 270 degrees of a circle and part of that would snap off (and, inevitably, get lost), so gluing wasn't an option.

The clamp down mech was screwed to the center piece too, I think, but nothing much went wrong with that. I probably have a replacement drive and MAY have just the latch mech, but, I'd have to dig for that.
 
MikeS said:
Pshaw! I'm really a kindly polite and pleasant old geezer most of the time; don't know how some folks could possibly have gotten any other impression...;-)
Click to expand...

MikeS: I knew it was only a matter of time before you saw that.
Fish on !

OP has made a post, but hasn't replied.

Druid - Tandon seems to have made a few different latch systems - surely any of them work work as a replacement.
 
Lorne said:
Druid - Tandon seems to have made a few different latch systems - surely any of them work work as a replacement.
Click to expand...

Yes, they have made quite a few and all were unique to the chassises they were attached to. You could probably pull the whole faceplate off and work something out with another latch mechanism, but, I've never tried it.
 
I might be able to help him out. I don't think he's to far away from me and I have some extra dead full heights I could use. Shugarts and Tandons and maybe a Texas peripheral.
 
Chromedome45 said:
I might be able to help him out. I don't think he's to far away from me and I have some extra dead full heights I could use. Shugarts and Tandons and maybe a Texas peripheral.
Click to expand...

If you don't have the correct one, I've also got some Tandons (who doesn't have a dead Tandon?), Magnetic Peripherals and Siemens.

With that selection, something has to work.
 
Hehe.. tough crowd but not much different than any other forum i've joined over the years and not quite as rough as the old BBS days with the trusty 14.4 :)

Not sure i understand what some of the questions mean, like 'what model number'.. it's a trs 80 model 3? not sure what else there is to add to that pertinent to the floppy drive, what am I missing that would be good info to know? Someone else commented that they come with two and I should just swap them. The model 3 with a floppy at all was optional, the base had no floppies and only 16k, the higher ends had 1 or 2 and more memory. I have 2 model 3's in my collection, one is a base 16k with no floppies the other is a 48k with a single floppy (the broken one). Attached a couple pix as requested, pretty high res so if that's taboo let me know but I thought the res would help with seeing what's going on with the pins. I tried hot glue and a couple other things to hold those pins in place but nothing is really working.

Really want to get this thing 100%, I first learned BASIC and Pascal on this machine in the middle school days around 1980.

For those interested in more 'historical' versions of classic computers, I have in my collection the original IBM PC modified and customized by Gottlieb and used by Tim Skelly to write some arcade classics like Reactor. If anyone is skilled with resurrecting data from a seagate ST506 on a PC please, contact me. The 5mb drive is not behaving, but on that drive is the source code for many classic arcade games. I'd love to put it in the hands of someone far more experienced than I to attempt to retrieve data.

/brian


DSCF0702.jpgDSCF0701.jpg
 
bjones said:
Hehe.. tough crowd but not much different than any other forum i've joined over the years and not quite as rough as the old BBS days with the trusty 14.4 :)

Not sure i understand what some of the questions mean, like 'what model number'.. it's a trs 80 model 3? not sure what else there is to add to that pertinent to the floppy drive, what am I missing that would be good info to know?
Click to expand...
I was asking about the make and model no. of the drive since you never know what a previous owner might have put into it, but the picture seems to confirm that it's a Tandon TM-100.

Hot glue's definitely not going to do the job, but a two part epoxy probably would, especially if you reinforce the break with something.
 
Last edited:
Druid6900 said:
I think it was the Tandon drive that we had to replace the door latch mechanism so often that I used to keep a dozen in stock at any given time.

...I probably have a replacement drive and MAY have just the latch mech, but, I'd have to dig for that.
Click to expand...
Not from one of mine I hope ;-) I was hoping to retrieve them some day...
 
From what I can see in those pics, it looks like it's just the drive door/latch that needs replacing.
In the past, I've found that the doors/latches are pretty much interchangeable between drives.

Just out of curiosity, what is the make and model of that drive (is there a sticker somewhere)?
It looks like the face plate on that drive has rounded corners - I've never seen that before. All the drives I've seen, had squared corners.
 
Lorne said:
It looks like the face plate on that drive has rounded corners - I've never seen that before. All the drives I've seen, had squared corners.
Click to expand...

The drive itself has a faceplate with square corners - it's just mounted behind the plastic bezel of the TRS-80.

-Ian
 
Hazing the newb is great funz no? Been a long time since I had to put up with that treatment.

I asked what would be pertinent because I wanted to know, not to request snarky remarks in my direction. I provided photos, it's a standard factory drive, there are no markings that I can see short of removing the drive and looking in currently hidden places. If you already know they factory installed multiple models of drive and it made a difference, why not just tell me that and say look for something instead of looking down your nose at me? I have only ever used these machines with factory drives, never seen one with any kind of door other than the one in mine so model numbers of the actual drives weren't even something that crossed my mind as they've all looked the same.


I really kinda thought this would be a much more friendly crowd than this, but it seems more like people are just waiting for someone to give grief to that doesn't know exactly how to answer a question or answer it in the 'proper' way. Three of the folks responding here I know for years on other forums too oddly enough :)

anyway, a couple kind folks have contacted me on the side with offers to help and i'll follow up that way.

thanks.
/brian
 
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