HP1650A Logic Analyzer Floppy Mod

[Sid723]

Has anyone ever worked on a HP1650 analyzer before? I have one that I purchased a few years ago. I foresee that one day the floppy drive will stop working and would like to mitigate this problem.

Has anyone ever tried to replace an old floppy drive with an interface that will allow it to use say a USB drive?

I found a link to this. Has anyone ever tried to do this before?

 

[(*steve*)]

Describe the floppy drive to me and the nature of the fault.

I have some experience repairing some of the old large 3.5 inch drives (the ones that are about 7 cm high).

If you can't insert a disk unless you press the eject button, then maybe I can help you.

 

[Sid723]

Nothing wrong with the drive (at least for now). I am just looking to the future when drives will eventually be phased out or replaced by other medium.

I found the link in my last post that talks about a solid state replacement for floppy drives and allows you to plug in a USB thumb drive.

Just wondering if anyone has ever tried replacing a floppy with one of those gizmos.

 

[(*steve*)]

OK, I thought the device may be a vintage one with one of HP's original drives that do not have a standard interface.

Here is an article about repairing them. See the section "fixing the eject problems", and the one after that. These deal specifically with an issue that was endemic to those c1982 disk drives that HP used. Later they started using drives with a conventional interface, so replacement s a viable option.

I do note that 9114 disk drives were mentioned in the same breath as HP1650A's on the net, so my assumption is that they are from the same era and may have the same drive issues.