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Atari PCF554 with 3.5" mechanism


djglish

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I have an Atari PCF554 drive that I inherited.  When I looked up the info it says these are 5.25" drives.  The one that I have has a 3.5" mechanism in it.  There is an Anti tamper tape over one of the screw holes.  It's slightly damaged but doesn't look like the screw was removed (unless someone did a really good job).  Does anyone know if Atari made a 3.5" version of this drive?  

 

 

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I'll probably put it up for sale near the end of the month.  I want to get a chance to check it out some more.  I know it boots up fine.  

I saw one up on ebay with a real hefty price tag.  

 

I'm going to open up the the 554 drive and see if it looks like was replaced or is original.

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While anything is possible, I really can't imagine why Atari would've released something like this. They already had external 3.5" floppy drives available for the ST line. It really makes no sense that they would have released a 3.5" version of the PCF554 that would've competed with their already existing drives.

 

Or were these for the Atari PC line and I'm confusing them?

 

I'm betting that a previous owner just replaced the drive mechanism, but it will be interesting to see what you find out.

 

Edited by bfollowell
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2 hours ago, 7800 2 said:

I think that tamper seal is the one that Best Electronics uses.

 

On Page 58 of the Best Electronics catalog they list a CB314 3.5 inch floppy disk drive which is shown in an XF551/PCF554 style case, so I think you are right.  This was probably sold by Best Electronics.

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I opened the case up.  The board does say PCF554 and the drive cable has an adapter on it where it connects to the 3.5" drive.  The cable looks like the old 5-1/4" connector.  I was impressed that the inside looked very clean, no dirt or dust.  The drive has no label on it.  

 

My other question is why did Atari even bother making a 5-1/4" drive for the ST/TT/PC series?  I remember my first PC computer did come with a 5-1/4" and 3.5" drives.  I paid over $2000 for a 486SX33 computer.  Not sure what year.

 

Not sure if this drive is worth selling.  I will be cleaning up the TT that came with it and will put that up for sale.  

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12 minutes ago, djglish said:

My other question is why did Atari even bother making a 5-1/4" drive for the ST/TT/PC series?

 

My guess is backwards compatibility.  Many users probably already had tons of data saved on 5-1/4" diskettes when they decided to upgrade their systems.

 

Sell the drive, someone will find it useful.  Personally, I'd love to build a SCSI tower that connects to my TT that has a 3-1/2" floppy drive, 5-1/4" floppy drive, 44Mb SyQuest drive, 200Mb SyQuest drive, and CD-ROM drive.  Then I'd be able to copy and transfer between all of the main media types.

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I opened the case up.  The board does say PCF554 and the drive cable has an adapter on it where it connects to the 3.5" drive.  The cable looks like the old 5-1/4" connector.  I was impressed that the inside looked very clean, no dirt or dust.  The drive has no label on it.  

 

My other question is why did Atari even bother making a 5-1/4" drive for the ST/TT/PC series?  I remember my first PC computer did come with a 5-1/4" and 3.5" drives.  I paid over $2000 for a 486SX33 computer.  Not sure what year.

 

Not sure if this drive is worth selling.  I will be cleaning up the TT that came with it and will put that up for sale.  

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Sell the drive, someone will find it useful.  Personally, I'd love to build a SCSI tower that connects to my TT that has a 3-1/2" floppy drive, 5-1/4" floppy drive, 44Mb SyQuest drive, 200Mb SyQuest drive, and CD-ROM drive.  Then I'd be able to copy and transfer between all of the main media types.

 

I have a hard drive multi-bay case that I bought with a whopping 105mb hard drive.  It had an ICD SCSi card and three empty bays.  Right now I have a Syquest 105mb drive in one bay and a SCSI CD drive in another.  I also am in the process of mounting a ST Floppy drive that came out of a dead ST.  Not quite sure how I'll do the cabling for the floppy.  I'll have to find a ST type female floppy to mount on the back of the case and then cable it to the drive.  

 

I'm retiring in a little over a month so I will have plenty of time to work on it.  Plus we can't really go out much, now a days.

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11 hours ago, djglish said:

I opened the case up.  The board does say PCF554 and the drive cable has an adapter on it where it connects to the 3.5" drive.  The cable looks like the old 5-1/4" connector.  I was impressed that the inside looked very clean, no dirt or dust.  The drive has no label on it.  

 

My other question is why did Atari even bother making a 5-1/4" drive for the ST/TT/PC series?  I remember my first PC computer did come with a 5-1/4" and 3.5" drives.  I paid over $2000 for a 486SX33 computer.  Not sure what year.

 

Not sure if this drive is worth selling.  I will be cleaning up the TT that came with it and will put that up for sale.  

I connected 5.25 inch drive from PC back in 1988 to Atari ST. So, I have concrete experience. After you solve cabling it works not well. The reason is that larger drive is slower, so needs higher steprate. It needs special SW for setting it to 12 mS (instead 3 mS). + disks might be HD, what will work only on Mega STE, TT, Falcon, but still need to correct steprate.

And the ugly part: 5.25 inch drive damaged my ST. The sound chip, which drives floppy control lines (yeah, it has some ports). The reason is higher current pulled by drive. In case of TT there might be buffers on those lines - you need to check TT schematic. If no, then don't connect 5.25 inch drive to it. Of course, it is possible to add buffers (what I did after replacing sound chip), but that needs some skills.

 

I guess that this PCF554 was for Atari PC - and first letters confirm it. And why bothered ? Simply - most of PC SW, user data was on such disks in those years.

 

Good luck with that tower. Will need to study connector pinouts, what is difference between floppy drives made for ST and for PC and rest. And there is one what might be unnoticed after quick test:  disk change detection problem - potential data loss !

http://atari.8bitchip.info/flomodam.html

 

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7 hours ago, djglish said:

My other question is why did Atari even bother making a 5-1/4" drive for the ST/TT/PC series?  I remember my first PC computer did come with a 5-1/4" and 3.5" drives.  I paid over $2000 for a 486SX33 computer.  Not sure what year.

Because most PC software came on 5-1/4" disks. This was made for the Atari PC1 which was introduced in 1987. I don't know about you, but in 1987, most PC software still came on 5 1/4" disks so that is why the Atari PC came with a 5 1/4" disk drive built in. PCs didn't start using 3.5" disks in large quantities until the IBM PS/2 came out in 1987.

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I'm coming close to finishing another project right now.  I'm mounting a mini PC into an Atari 800XL computer.  Just got the keyboard working with the PC.  I want to make a connector to use my old Atari joysticks with this and I'm building a wireless mouse into an old game cartridge.  It's fun getting back into these kinds of projects

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