Mpc 3000 floppy disk drive refurbishing?

Hi everyone.

Unfortunately my floppy disk drive's gone for good. As it occurs - it's a huge pain in the a*s to get a proper working one. Price on mpc stuff kills and I cannot use zip drive, cause previous owner stuck some sh*t inside the port and when i plug the zip drive in it blows up the fuse every single time. Cannot afford HxC emulator right now and the time in my case matters a lot - I've almost finished my new LP. ALMOST.

Now - I got a friend working in electronics. He said there is an option worth trying: exchanging the inner data reading mechanism from a working unit to my dead floppy drive. Have any of You tried it or heard about anyone getting down to it this way? The biggest problem ofcourse is finding the drive with the PINS (for master/slave settings). There are loads of teac's like mine with almost the same serial number but without the pins - these drives are being produced nowadays.

Please, let me know what ya'll think about this.

IIRC replacing the R/W head assy puts your drive in need of head calibration. If your tech friend can manage that, go ahead and share the process. If your drive is already beyond the usual scope of tricky to try (cleaning the head with a cotton tip dabbed in Isopropy aclohol, carefully lubing the head transport system etc.) there's not much to loose, technically. I've considered a re-calibration of my floppy drive some time ago, but concluded that it simply isn't worth the effort digging into that matter.
Of course, your situation is much different … I suppose you already considered to ask a fellow 3000 user to borrow his/her drive for the time being?

MPC60 and MPC3000 FDD are easy to replace once you've done your homework.

Maybe the 1.44mb floppy emulators are worth considering...

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

My friend'll give it a try, hope it'll work.

No, I didn't ask any 3k user for the floppy drive because of a simple reason - none of people I know has it. I believe I'm one of few in my country who actually owns this sampler (and it's the Limited Edition unit), haha. Would You believe it?

Yep, moving on to emulator is my aim in the nearest time - modifing my 3k and ensoniq eps 16 as well. We'll see, depends on the condition of my wallet.

Cheers!

nu-comer wrote:I believe I'm one of few in my country who actually owns this sampler (and it's the Limited Edition unit)

Where do you live, Antartica?

And can you contribute to this as you have an LE viewtopic.php?f=4&t=142161.

Much appreciated.

Haha, good one, Clint. I live in Poland, Eastern Europe. Seen maybe 2-3 guys having the 3000 model. None of them got LE though. 1000 or 2000xl are the most common in here. I had to get mine from US.

Yes, I'll post mine with the pic in the thread You mentioned just as soon, as I get home from a week trip.

Poland. So you can easily get certain parts/gear from the UK if need be when you come over? Plus there is Mr Jazzcat on the South coast, so you should be alright for repairs too. Oddly I have two LE's at the moment, for no particular reason...

Clint wrote:Oddly I have two LE's at the moment, for no particular reason...

There's always a reason behind everything. In your case it's called a gearlust

I've got a spare 3K floppy drive but I'll do you a favour and not sell it to you. Follow the advice on here about upgrading to an emulator or SCSI device. You'll wish you'd done it sooner!

All right then.

The issue is solved. Imagine this: the drive stopped reading floppies because of dust and other sh*t inside of it! Haha, the situation was hilarious. My friend (the one from electronics company) just opened it and done some cleaning. Now it works like a charm!

Let it be a hint for those who'd be in similiar situation to mine: DO NOT assume your floppy drive is dead - just clean it out, haha!

Anyway - thanks for all Your feedback. I'll try to get the HxC emulator as soon, as I can.

And I've posted my LE in the thread.

Cheers.

nu-comer wrote:DO NOT assume your floppy drive is dead - just clean it out, haha!

As always, your mileage may vary. I went beyond cleaning that to put my drive back to working order but it in the end it was no more than a waste of time. My CF Reader brought me joy, this thing is quick!