Hi everyone,

I bought via Ebay an MSX II Philips 8280 which works fine except that both drives don't work.
I cleaned heads and checked the cables but everything just looks fine.

Both drives are recongnized by the system. If I insert a 720 KB floppy disk and enter "call format" and enter "A" or "B", respectively drive A or B will be accessed but wether I choose single side or double side will lead to a "bad parameter" error message.

If I enter "files", the drive is accessed by the system but I get a "Disk offline".
If I insert no disk, the system says "Not ready".

If tried to connect a PC drive with both a 720 KB and 1,44 MB disks but got exactly the same message and I know this drive works on a PC.

I doubt both original drives are dead.
And those drives don't use belt.

Any idea anyone ?

Thanking you in advance for you help !

Gilles (boy's name here)

that sound like an FDC problem

try to change the FDD cable

But do you think both cables (it's a 2 drives computer) will be bad ?

The PC drives are not working on the msx
first you have to rotate the cables, because the connector is up-side-down

MSX need a ready signal and have to be jumpered on A or B

Perhaps the diskrom is broken, You can replace it, but I'm not sure if the rom is placed in a socket or solder on the mainboard

There's definately a socket between the ROM and the solder.

I tried several cables but I'm pretty sure it's not a cable problem.
Do you guys know how is the disk rom labelled on the main board ?

I can see 3 roms on socket. 2 are masked programmed roms and 1 is an UV eprom. There is a sticker on it that says JQ0001K. Does this mean something to anyone ?

If you have diskbasic, and you have. because the drive is trying to load, then the rom is ok.

It is the one with the sticker.

What is diskbasic ? I didn't have anything with the MSX. Just the keyboard and the central unit.
When I switch it on, it does access both drives but I don't have any bootable disk.
Anyway, it should be able to format a 720 KB disk, right ? But it doesn't ! It seems like both drives can't read or write but i don't understand how 2 drives can have the very same problem at the very same time. Too much of a coincidence, is it ? Is there any other clues ?

I think your drive cable is broken. Both drives use the same cable, normally. (That is why only one drive can be accessed at the same time...)

Diskbasic is just the extension to MSX basic that gives you disk commands. You used disk basic commands, so it works. I doubt the ROM is broken, as Bas said.

It is not the cable, because there are 2 drive cables in the 8250
and also the 8280

Mostly the drives are broken, because they are very old, more than 15 years.
But you have to know how the replace drives.
You can always come here or sent the computer to me.

It is no problem to fix the machine

Thank you very much !
Actually, I myself am a computer technician but I wanted to be sure that the drives were dead !
By the way, is there any drawback to replacing original drives by PC drives (of course by making the necessary connection changes) ?

Also, as an electronic technician, floppy drives can be old but that is not enough to make them dead. I mean, they can be dirty (if so, then a cleaning should make it working again) and the different motors rusted or lacking oil but from what I've seen in the case of my 8280, the head and both motors (stepping head motor and spindle motor) are working.
So, my question is electronically speaking what part is dead ?

Just hook up a PC drive to it and see if it works... There's a number of sites with diagrams on how to hook it up... I put a PC drive in my Turbo-R and it wasn't all that hard. It does have its drawbacks indeed, but the only other option would be to purchase two 'new' drives for your computer. If can, try to see if the motor actually manages to spin the disk. In some cases the motor itself will spin, but the disk doens't move or it spins irregularly.