Powerbook 1400 floppy corruptor!

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h3ch4's picture
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Powerbook 1400 floppy corruptor!

So i've just bought a used Powerbook 1400 and upgraded it to a 400MHz G3. It came with a floppy drive, but up until now, I hadn't used PC formatted disks with it, although it works fine with Mac formatted floppys. I load some docs onto a PC-floppy, pop it into my PC, and... nothing. The PC tells me that it's not formatted. So I find another PC disk and open it on the PC. No problem. I pop it in my PB, copy over files, stick it in my PC, and it reports it as unformatted! So I go back to my PB, stick it in, and my files are still there and I'm able to access it! Long story short, I tried 3 different PCs, with 3 different drives, all to no avail. Yet, It still works fine on my PB! What's going on?!?!
Has this happened to anyone else?

h3ch4's picture
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oops

Forgot to mention that I'm running OS 9.1 and I've tried using the PB1400 floppy update already. No dice.

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The heads in the floppy drive

The heads in the floppy drive may be out of alignment, which means they're writing the data on a physically incorrect portion of the disk. This will be readable by this drive, since it's heads are in the correct mis-alignment to read them, but on no other system since their's are in the correct place Smile

You can swap the floppy drive mechanism between almost all powerbooks. My powerbook 1400's disk drive's heads were broken, and I was able to route the ribbon cable out the front of the drive and plug it into the mechanism from a Powerbook 140 Wink It doesn't fit in the case, but as an emergency or one-off, it'll work.

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Its a well known bug in many

Its a well known bug in many g3 upgrade cards...it screws up the pc formated floppy disks.

h3ch4's picture
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!

Really? Has this happened to anyone else with a Sonnet Crescendo 400 MHz upgrade?

DrBunsen's picture
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Re: Powerbook 1400 floppy corruptor!

up until now, I hadn't used PC formatted disks with it, although it works fine with Mac formatted floppys.

This is what happens if the extension that reads PC formatted disks doesn't load at startup. Your heads and drive are probably fine, as they are reading Mac disks OK. Check in the extensions manager control panel - Sorry I've forgotten what the extn is called for now, but it should be obvious by the name, or the description that shows up in the bottom-right of the EM window when you click on the name. Will re-post when my home machine is online, or if you can't find it, PM me.

Always check software before hardware - it's a lot easier to break hardware if you mess with it.

And is it just me or is the quality of advice on these forums tailing off of late?

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Be careful casting stones, Dr

Be careful casting stones, Dr.Bunsen. I had to read the original post a few times to figure out what disks were going where and when.

From my read of it, he's able to read PC formatted disks on the PB, which he wouldn't be able to do if that extension wasn't loaded. The problem is when those PC-formatted disks are put back in a PC.

To back up Martakz, with information from here


After the upgrade, I can no longer write to PC formatted floppies and use them in a PC. For some reason, whenenver I write to a PC floppy and try to read it in any PC, the PC returns a message that the floppy is corrupt and would I like to format it. This is bad. I often transfer Word files back and fourth between a PC and Mac. I have to connect to the network to do that now.

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eep

Yep, you're right. Aspersions withdrawn. This one is beyond me - maybe it is a head alignment problem.

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pb 1400 problems

I had almost the same problem. I was trying to copy stuffit expander from my other mac to my pb 1400. I tried for three hours, using just about every floppy that I owned, but no dice. When I reformatted the hd and reloaded the os, the floppy worked fine with a clean install of mac os 8.5. So you might try a clean install of your os.

wen
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wen

I too have a problem with the floppy drive on my 1400c.
the diskette won't insert 100% into the floppy drive.

since it is old and no warrantee and its not working
anyway, i am thinking of taking it apart and
putting it back together to see if i can locate
what is wrong with it. i did that with my mouse last summer.

anyone have any other suggestions?

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