Downgrade from ZIP to Floppy

tapedeck wrote:thanks for confirming - you def want to check what kind of cable your drive needs.

also just for some education, if you are making your own cable, the yellow and red wires are for different voltages, and you need to make sure you get the right one. one is +5v and the other is +12v. you can check which is which easily with a voltmeter - wit the cable plugged into the mpc motherboard, and the mpc powered on, put the ground of the voltmeter on the black wire and the other probe on either the red or yellow wire...you will get either 12 or 5 volts.

the floppy only uses one of these.

CharlesRandolph wrote:Great Advice! Excellent. Now here is a question, if he has the internal zip disk install. Isn't it already using that 4 pin jumper cable to power it. So all he needs to have is 40 IDE CABLE right?

SimonInAustralia wrote:Also, the floppy power connector on the MPC mainboard is not a berg/mini-molex connector, it is actually a JST EH connector, but many seem to use a berg/mini-molex in it's place.

tapedeck wrote:

CharlesRandolph wrote:Great Advice! Excellent. Now here is a question, if he has the internal zip disk install. Isn't it already using that 4 pin jumper cable to power it. So all he needs to have is 40 IDE CABLE right?

i'm not entirely sure - i think the zips use molex - but i have always avoided zips.

it doesn't matter what he HAD, or what someone else had (case in point, your original comment ), the main thing to remember here is to check the drive that is going in, and get the cable appropriate for that.

we strangers on the internet can only guess and talk back and forth, the person with the actual equipment needs to do most of this work on their own.

hopefully something in here helps tho.

Wal Martian wrote:

SimonInAustralia wrote:Also, the floppy power connector on the MPC mainboard is not a berg/mini-molex connector, it is actually a JST EH connector, but many seem to use a berg/mini-molex in it's place.

Lazy Ray wrote:Question: do you need a specific ribbon cable? Or a special floppy drive? I'm getting the feeling it isn't the exact same hardware as in an old pc.

I've tested two floppy drives. I've disconnected the yellow power cable, and also tested with the yellow cable connected.

The only change is that the MPC gives a floppy option in the load/save screen, but says it isn't connected. When I choose the floppy, I hear a click in the drive, but even the led doesn't light up.

I also had to use an other port on the motherboard, because the zip drive used the wider ribbon cable. Are both ports on the motherboard IDE?

Lazy Ray wrote:Thanks for the support!

I first only connected the 5v. Didn't work. Then I connected the yellow cable back for the 12v because in every computer both are connected, so it couldn't harm the floppy drive I guess. Result was the same. I also used a multimeter to check if red was really 5v and yellow 12v, and it was.

The motherboard has 4 connecters for ribbon cables:



I figured out that the one with the red arrow is for the 8-out. I've put my floppy drive on blue. My zip drive (which died) is back on green. And there is a bigger one on top that is yellow. Can someone confirm that 'blue' and 'green' are just IDE and the bigger one on top, with the yellow arrow is SCSI?

When the ZIP drive was working, it was always saying ATAPI in load/save. So I guess it was just IDE right?

I can't really find a good layout of the motherboard with the discription of the different sockets. But abount the one with the blue arrow was said that it was for floppy, in an other topic. And the size matches with the standard ribbon cable for a floppy drive from an old PC.

The only strange thing is, when I take a look at the ribbon cable on lets say MPC Stuff, it is much more twisted. Never saw something like that in real life: https://www.mpcstuff.com/mpc-2000xl-flo ... bles-used/

Lazy Ray wrote:Yeah man, correct! But it isn’t some exotic IDE ribbon cable with different setting right?