Ex vintage ROHDE & SCHWARZ professional communications analysis & monitoring equipment.
Barely used from the day it was born! This is because the floppy drive was only ever used to load the system software at startup and the rest of the time, the drive was unused.
Myriads of "interesting" details below - I am amazed at the number of online "cowboys" who don't tell you anything and worst still, don't know how to pack sensitive equipment (such as these drives) properly.
Another amazing fact is the asking price from these same folk. The price ranges from US$150 ~ US$300 and yet, I used to sell these wholesale in the 1980's for A$100 to the manufacturers - I feel something is a bit out of kilter here! For me, it's all about the love of "old" technology and not the "fast and unjustified" buck, so I hope my asking price is considered far more reasonable.
TEAC 5.25" Floppy Drive
Model: Model: FD-55BV-82-U
Made in Japan (NOT a 3rd party country such as Malaysia)
2nd generation floppy drive (BV)
Double Sided Double Density
48 tracks per inch
80 track capacity (40 on each side)
500Kb native capacity, commonly referred to as a 360Kb drive (DOS format PC) but with other systems, this could be a different capacity e.g CP/M 320Kb - it's all in the format used.
Half height drive, 41mm
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Excellent
Clean and while inspecting the drive, I gave the heads a clean (manually and NOT with a floppy drive cleaner urgh!)
MY TECHNICAL HISTORY
My career in electronics began just BEFORE floppy drives, in the days of punch cards/continuous paper tape etc !!!
Then along came floppy drives, not these "little drives" but the 8" single sided and then double sided. I supplied thousands of drives to manufacturers of industrial control systems and the S100 buss systems (one major manufacturer was right here in Sydney)
These were truly "floppy disks" being so large.
Then the boffins in the research labs came up with the 5.25" version. This changed the world of disk storage, first with "full" height drives and then the half height drives such as this FD-55BV
This was well before Windoz, the predominant OS being CP/M or DOS but also many proprietary systems floating around as well. 360Kb (180Kb on each side of the disk) was considered MASSIVE! These drives changed the world of data access and storage.
TESTING:
It has been quite a few thunderstorms since I last saw a classic 5.25" floppy drive and this one made my eyes light up! It has been sitting in a piece of specialised test equipment (from Rohde & Schwarz Germany) and only ever used in a "clean environment" due to the nature of the testing that was being undertaken. Actually the drive has seen very little use because it was ONLY used to load the OS and nothing more. Communication with the equipment was via RS485 (industrial communications protocol), no need for the local floppy storage.
Because I have a LOT of old equipment, both IT and Audio, I have a special test system set up which allows me to test just about any type of weird external device such as Zip drives, Travan, all floppies included Quad density, 2.88Mb 3.5" etc so testing this drive was a snap. I keep one extremely valuable 5.25" DSDD floppy for testing - I WILL NOT BE SUPPLYING MY TEST FLOPPY!
Jumper settings were checked (set for DS0 at the moment) and other settings are all fine. These drives can be easily reconfigured by using the PCB jumpers, lots of them! This gives great flexibility for specialised industrial systems for example.
I think it is very important to have all the technical information on hand and I will be supplying the FULL TECHNICAL manual (on CD-r as it is over 70 pages!) This manual is important to understand the function of all those jumpers and it also gives a nice techie look at how floppy drives work (if that is your "thing")
So the drive is 100% and ready to go.
Why would you want a 500Kb capacity disk drive? Restoration of old equipment - often the floppy is the only way to "talk" to the equipment. Of course an old PC like the original IBM's - they all used 500Kb/360Kb drives (500Kb is the native capacity of the floppy but once formatted, the available storage becomes less, how much less depends upon the format used)
Some VERY OLD musical instruments used these drives as well, pre the 3.5" floppy drive often found on old Synth's, Keyboards.
SPECIAL NOTES:
I am extremely familiar with these drives, if anyone offers you a 5.25" (or 8" for that matter) without a dummy disk inserted, refuse it! Originally (when shipped), all floppy drives had a dummy diskette inserted in the door. This means you can turn the door lock and down come the heads to rest on the dummy disk. This protects the heads, particularly the "top head" from damage while being transported. I don't have a "real" dummy disk so I made one just for this purpose. Without a disc inserted (whether it be a dummy or "the real thing" (hello Russel Morris), the door lock will not engage.
Of course take out the dummy disk (sheets of paper cut to size) before powering up and using the drive!
Always always only accept a floppy drive packed in ESD material, usually a bag. These devices don't like static electricity - when uninstalled, keep them in an ESD safe environment!
So, this drive comes with the white dummy disk inserted and locked in place plus it is within a sealed ESD bag.
