The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Yes they were rack and pinions with steel belts on them since carbon fiber wasn't available. But they still were rack and pinion IMHO...

[stj]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

actually most 8" and a lot of early 5.25" drives used a belt to position the slider.

i imagine with the 50pin connector half the pins where ground - to stop crosstalk on long cables.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

IIRC the 8" floppies used a 50-pin card edge connector, but still is "standard" and could be adapted to the typical 34-pin. The DB37 attests to that, not all 50 pins are used.

I also will have to disagree, I thought the 3½" floppies were more reliable than 5¼" probably due to enclosed cartridge that were difficult to fold. I'd imagine all floppy drives used a sliding head system, though 3½" drives tend to invariably use a leadscrew type much like compact disk. 5¼" drives however are a mixture from leadscrew to rack and pinion type head movement. 8" drives tend to always be rack and pinion type.

Similarly 3½" drives used direct drive motors, and 5¼" drives were a mixture of direct and belt driven. 8" drives seem invariably belt driven.

The 8" floppies I was terrified to use as these were really unreliable IMHO, they got dirty easily and scraped up the media like mad. The motors are really torquey and strip through anything.

[stj]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

unlike 3.5 floppies, they are very reliable, much greater surface area per bit.
they do use a sliding head system similar to a cd though, so you need to clean and lube the sliders.

i used to have a lot of experience with 5.25 drives - i used to repair the commodore ones for the c64 etc.

[Per Hansson]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

When you cleaned the floppy did you also clean the read head with IPA?
If not then do, and also grease the bearings.
This might allow the unit to work fine.
As I understand it 5.25" floppies are supposed to be quite reliable.

[stj]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

the only 8" drives i ever saw uncased had a LOT of pins on them - the connector adapted onto a 37pin D connector.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Last time I looked at a 8" drive interface, I thought it was electrically identical to the 5¼" / 3½" floppy drives, but the connector had a different pinout. I was really tempted to hook up a 5.25" HD FDD to my TRS-80 back then as the 8" floppies were hard to come by, but didn't help me read my existing media...

I think I still have two 5¼" floppy drives now, both are high density drives... No 8" drives (my TRS-80 used a 1.2MB double sided double density 8" drive).

---

Hmm..weird, floppies magnetic media shouldn't degrade over time, though the lubrication may be lost. Look very closely at the media to see if there are any scratches...? I should check mine if they still work or not...

[stj]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

now you need an 8" floppy drive!
(and build an interface)

[momaka]

TEAC FD-55GFR 5.25'' floppy drive tests

Attached in this post are the pictures of the 5.25" floppy drive, as promised to Mr. Hansson. This is after I cleaned it up. I haven't tested it yet, still (lol). But I will soon.

Well, it only too me 2 years to get to this.

However, I'm excited to say, the TEAC FD-55GFR actually works!

I built a test Windows 98SE system to try some old software, and that's when it dawned on me I could test this floppy drive and also see if it could read my 25-year old 5.25” floppies. Unfortunately, I think that's a little too much time for all of this old hardware. I couldn't get anything read from any of the 5.25” floppies. So, I tried formatting one fully. The TEAC FD-55GFR drive was able to complete that operation, albeit with quite a number of bad sectors (I imagine the magnetic coating on those 30+ year old floppy disks is probably nowhere near spec anymore.)

Ouch! The bad sectors are taking up approximately 1/10 of the entire capacity of that floppy drive.

Nevertheless, I was curious to see if I can still read/write files to a 5.25” disk. The screenshot seen above was actually originally a BMP file (taken on the Windows 98 PC with Print Screen and then saved in MS Paint… which only allows saving in BMP format for Windows 9x lol. ) It was, of course, too large to fit on a floppy (several MB worth of data, because… BMP format ) So as a test, I used WinRAR to compress the file, which came down to 59 KBs of data. After this, I wrote it onto the 5.25” floppy, then copied it back from the floppy onto the HDD and decompressed to see if the file was still intact and readable… and miraculously, it was!

So the 5.25” drive does appear to be working, after all. However, when I tried reading from another of the old 5.25” floppies again and then back from this floppy with the compressed screenshot, the drive kept throwing errors that it's not ready or cannot read from source of disk (same as the other floppies before it.) I'm not sure what's going on there, but it looks like the motherboard controller could also be a bit finicky, because I had the same issue with the 3.5” floppy drive in that system. To clear the issue, I had to do a full power-down of the system each time. Seems as if the motherboard's controller gets hung onto something and only power-cycling clears it (a reboot doesn't.)

Either way, I'm still happy with this result. And now I can brag I have a more-or-less working 5.25” floppy drive in my collection of old junky hardware.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

lol me too once upon a time i did. it all has to do with the "HD" mark on 3.5" floppies causing the confusion. on those floppies, it meant high density not hard disk lol! computer acronyms getting u down lol!

[eccerr0r]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Not even a high density disk?
Looks like a SD or DD disk...

Teac fdd's were "da bomb" from back in the day IIRC. Currently I actually have two 5.25" FDDs still, one is a mitsumi I think, other is an epson dual (3.5 and 5.25 both in a HH bay.) Both are high density and can use high coercivity disks.

I don't have any spare 5.25" media however.

I have a lot more solo 3.5" FDD drives and media however...all are high density drives. And I still curse that person calling 3.5" floppies "hard disks"... GRR...

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Alright, one customer at a time, please!

Attached in this post are the pictures of the 5.25" floppy drive, as promised to Mr. Hansson. This is after I cleaned it up. I haven't tested it yet, still (lol). But I will soon. I'm curious if these fellas still work:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1540614123
They are close to 30 years old, I think (give or take a few years).

I can also snap a shot of the current build if you like TC, though there really isn't much to it now as it's still a bit temporary (at least the video card portion is, and possibly the PSU as well - will see).

Looks like 1994. And one of the first ones with a part that's actually made in China, LOL. Around the time I expected GE clock radios to start getting made in China, LOL.

[Drack]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Now, we all know PacMan is yellow in color. So perhaps I should paint that PWR button yellow? Yes, it probably will look tacky (but understandable, given the case design, no?) And while at it, maybe also paint the Reset button blue?? That way, when the PC is on, there will be the Red and Green LEDs, along with the Blue reset button, for a complete RGB color space. And with the yellow PacMan, that's all the Windows colors too.

Of course, those are just some ideas. Not sure if I will do them, though.

I support the idea of painting the power button yellow, nail polish should work well and it's cheap.
Nice work with the latex paint, as for the brush marks i wouldn't about them, they are on the inside and also, anything is better than rust

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

I'm more interested to see what goes in it...

There you go, picture attached:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1541371104

Like I said, not much to it yet. I plan on using a different video card (most likely a GeForce 6800 XT, when I finish doing a heatsink mod for it) and also installing only 1 or 1.5 GB of RAM. AFAIK, socket 754 mobos don't support dual channel, so I can mix-n-match sticks. Right now, there's 3 GB in the board, which just isn't necessary. The build also needs an optical drive and a rear exhaust fan. And I probably should recap the motherboard too - it has mostly OST caps (RLX on CPU low side and RLP on other small rails), along with Chemicon KZE 16V 1200 uF caps on the CPU input side. I can use those KZE caps in PSUs, so I'll probably swap them for Nichicon HN or Rubycon MCZ @ 1500 uF. In addition to that, the Northbridge heatsink needs to be swapped with a bigger one (and with a fan). Even though the chipset is a VIA, it does run warmer than I like to see chipsets run.

Never owned a 5.25" floppy myself, they are before my time.

Same here. I remember loading 3.5" floppies into the computer as a kid, but never 5.25" ones. This is truly my first "own" 5.25" drive. I think I also know which (old) PC I'm going to put it in eventually.

And yes, I still use 3.5" floppies too, very occasionally. I had Killdisk on one of them and another low-level format utility on another. Also used a few to do BIOS upgrades on a few mobos that actually needed them (otherwise, I never flash newer BIOS).

[Per Hansson]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

That is awesome!
Never owned a 5.25" floppy myself, they are before my time.
Still use 3.5" floppies at work (I'm a service technician) to this day though, so there's always that

[TechGeek]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

This drive appears to have been made in 1990.

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

lol @ pacman case....I'm more interested to see what goes in it...

Alright, one customer at a time, please!

Attached in this post are the pictures of the 5.25" floppy drive, as promised to Mr. Hansson. This is after I cleaned it up. I haven't tested it yet, still (lol). But I will soon. I'm curious if these fellas still work:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...1&d=1540614123
They are close to 30 years old, I think (give or take a few years).

I can also snap a shot of the current build if you like TC, though there really isn't much to it now as it's still a bit temporary (at least the video card portion is, and possibly the PSU as well - will see).

[Topcat]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

lol @ pacman case....I'm more interested to see what goes in it...

[momaka]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

The case front is like the case I bought on July 1, 2003! And had it until sometime in the later-2010s. My front was white and I painted it a certain shade of red. I also had corrosion similar to that, despite I didn't recall a mouse even getting into my computer room. It was more likely arachnids and/or insects, LOL.

Early 2000's sounds about right for these cases.

Yes, corrosion can happen from many things, including moist air + dust mixing together. In my case (literally! ), the mice dropping were stuck right on the corroded area, so there's no doubt they caused it, along with the urine. I just didn't take pictures of that as I figured... well, who takes pictures of mice droppings to put them on the internet?

The two affected PSUs also had lots of corrosion on their cases from the mice urine. In fact, I had to give the HEC Orion HP585D a wash, because some of that was stuck in the wires and on the primary-side heatsink, right on the switching MOSFET - and we all know that salt-water (which urine is similar to) is a good conductor.

Spent most of its life with a socket 462 platform.

I guess I got you 1-Up'd there - the Asus K8V-SE Delux is a socket 754 mobo.

Nice, but you disappointed me with no pictures of the 5.25" floppy drive

Sorry about that. I've been meaning to take pictures of it, along with testing it out as I'm not sure if it suffered from any corrosion too - I did clean it as best inside as I could, though.

I just finished a photo shoot session today with some older AT (PSU) "models".

[Per Hansson]

Re: The PacMan ATX Computer Case - cleaning and painting

Nice, but you disappointed me with no pictures of the 5.25" floppy drive