Emulator II : 3.5" Floppy Drive Upgrade

Emulator II 3.5" Floppy Drive  WHAT YOU NEED!  1) TEAC 3.5" Drive FD235HF-A529  2) IDE Extender Cable M - Fo  3) TEAC 5.25" to 3.5" Bay Adapter   Contact www.route66studios.com to buy a kit.

Introduction The Emulator II has either one or two 5.25" floppy drives, which are now become life expired. In many well utilised Emulator II's these drives are beginning to fail (motor death), or give read/write problems. The 5.25" media is also becoming harder to locate, and 5.25" are less reliable than 3.5" media.

Without a working drive an Emulator II is effectively useless. Now is the time to replace that failed or error prone 5.25" floppy drives. We encourage all EII users to upgrade to a new drive now, to ensure you will be able to read your valuable sample library in the long term.

The Shugart Legacy All E-mu samplers use a floppy drive interface that dates back to the original Shugart design and specification. This is slightly different than the current PC floppy interface specification. PC drives will therefore not work unless the jumper settings can be changed or you build a special interface cable.

5.25" Replacement  New 5.25" drives are no longer manufactured. The best replacement is a TEAC FD55GFR-7220 (in black), but these are difficult to locate as they have been out of production since 1999. Try eBay or a legacy PC component supplier. They have an operational life of 20,000 hours. You will need to set the ID to either 0 or 1 depending on whether it is drive 1 (upper) or drive 2 (lower). You will also need to set the RY strap to output a ready signal on pin 34. We have NOT tested this procedure.

Places to locate a drive:
Rapid Technology - Portland USA

3.5" Replacement Suitable new 3.5" drives are still being manufactured, and they work just like their larger brother. You will need the following components:

1. One TEAC FD235HF-A529 drive (black)
2. One TEAC CS235ROO 5.25" frame kit (black)
3. One 12" standard male - female 34 pin interface cable

The TEAC 3.5" drive can be configured using jumpers and it has an operational life of 30,000 hours. The Emulator II will only work with 3.5" DS/DD media (NOT DS/HD), as this has exactly the same rotation speed and disk sectors as 5.25" DS/DD media. The Emulator II formats the disk with NO additional capacity, just the usual 512KB. Read/write times are very similar, as is the noise!

The new 3.5 drive is best used to replace the lower drive 2, as the Emulator II can only format diskettes in the lower drive rather than the upper drive. By keeping a 5.25" drive you can access and copy across your existing EII sample library.

If you have an EII+ HD you can replace the upper drive or the hard disk. With a single drive EII you can replace the original drive or add a second - check to see that there is a floppy interface cable with two drive connectors. If you do, then it is possible to do the upgrade.
 

Fitting a 3.5" floppy drive is very easy, here are the step by step instructions.
 

Mount the new drive in the frame adapter. Fit the metal side frames first, loosely tighten the screws to the drive. Then fit the front bezel and tighten the screws.

Connect the interface cable extension to the new drive (red stripe aligned to pin 1), and connect the 5.25"/3.5" interface adapter to the other end of the interface cable (the slot in the adapter is aligned to the cables red stripe).

Make sure this slot in the adapter plug is the same way round as the old drive. Connect the power adapter to the new drive
 

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Power off the EII and disconnect external power.
Open up the case and disconnect the power and interface cable from the lower 5.25" drive. Remove the old drive, there are 4 machine screws, two each side.
 

Mount the new drive with its frame adapter into the EII lower drive bay. Be very careful not to damage the underside of the upper drive.
 

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Connect up the power and interface cable.
Check everything !
 

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Close the case, and connnect power.Boot up the EII from the upper drive. Insert and format a new 3.5" DS/DD in the lower drive. Save a bank !
 

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