Replacement Floppy Drives

Quest for More Information

Nov 2006: An sgroup member asks: Would anyone care to expand on this subject please. I'm no Klutz but I don't wish to barge in with a mallet and spanner without a little more detail. The new Sony floppy I bought doesn't have any jumpers (externally or internally) that I can see. Any more info would be most appreciated.

Stephan Morlock reports:

Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2001 05:15:55 -0500
From: Stephan Morlock
To: John Sellens
Subject: A Howto for the archive - Floppy replacement

Hello Mr. Sellens,
in case it ist of interest to other users of the S-50 I want to share
the following information.
I had to replace the floppy drive. A regular floppy does not work. I had
to buy one from Roland. But there is a cheaper way.
This is how it works:
-------------
Roland sent me a more or less regular Chinon Floppy drive, it has
jumpers and a black bezel of course, but it must be pretty popular,
because my old PC had the same drive built into it (although with a
white bezel). It was a Highscreen Pentium60 machine.  This drive, which
Roland Germany sells its customers as a replacement for the S-50 (black
bezel of course) is a:
Chinon FZ-357

The Roland manual says to set the jumpers
a) before adding a housing
X X X X X X X
O O O I O O O
X X-X X X X X
b) after adding a housing (I jumpered it that way and it works for the
S-50 Floppy)
X X X X X X X
O O O I O I O
X X-X X X X X

X = Jumper Pole
O = no contact/jumper
I or - = jumper
-----------------------------------------------------------

Greetings
Stephan Morlock

Kelvin Adams adds:

Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 16:56:03 +0000 (GMT)
From: Kelvin Adams
Subject: roland s-50 drives
To: jsellens@generalconcepts.com

Dear J. Sellens, sgroup archives.

Having dropped my already derelict Roland s-50, I had to change the drive.
I was able to use a Chinon drive as mentioned - a scrap Atari drive.
I can confirm the change in jumpers. It appears we need:-

jumper as drive zero.
jumper as ready, not change detect.
jumper as media detect off.

These changes appear to make a 1.44 drive work as a Roland 720KB.
I also had to remove Chinon's ttl/cmos jumper.
I will try other drives and report back.
Unfortunately, not all 1.44 drives are easy to jumper.
Good news is, you may not need a genuine 720 drive.

Merry Xmas,
Kelvin Adams

Route 66 Studios

April 30 2006 -- Rich at www.Route66studios.com mentions that they now have the W-30 2006 replcement floppy drives in stock.

From: Route66Studios@aol.com
Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 22:31:12 -0500
Subject: sgroup Replacement drives available now for S-50,S-330,S-550.
To: sgroup@sgroup.ca

Hey guys good news!

www.Route66studios.com We now have a new replacement floppy drive
for following Roland S-50, S-330, S-550. Our RTE Aurora drive is a
100% match, complete with black bezel.  Special thanks to Larry
Walters for sending in his S-330 for drive setup and testing.

We are currently seeking anyone that would like to send in an S-750,
S-760, or S-770 Roland samplers for drive testing and setup, contact
me for details.

Richard at www.Route66studios.com
608-365-5006