Roland XP 60 , 5 octave keyboard , 1997

[N_Cook]

In for a power supply fault but while in there, the floppy drive has never
worked. Would it be a standard PC drive? or known simple repairable stock
fault? It does klunk once, on pwering up , sort of PC fashion

 

[Meat Plow]

In for a power supply fault but while in there, the floppy drive has
never worked. Would it be a standard PC drive? or known simple
repairable stock fault? It does klunk once, on pwering up , sort of PC
fashion

I have an old S-20 that the floppy failed. Not a standard floppy. The
belt had turned to goo. After replacing , the diskette would not read.
Some tweaking of the head resulted in the disk to be read. Not sure this
applies to 60 but may be worth considering.

 

[N_Cook]

I have an old S-20 that the floppy failed. Not a standard floppy. The
belt had turned to goo. After replacing , the diskette would not read.
Some tweaking of the head resulted in the disk to be read. Not sure this
applies to 60 but may be worth considering.

I located the ps problem and will lok into the other end tomorrow , FD
covered over at the moment

 

[Meat Plow]

I located the ps problem and will lok into the other end tomorrow , FD
covered over at the moment

Well let me know what you find. The S20 has no ROM based sounds so all
was loaded at and during performance via floppy. These floppies are
roughly the size of a Minidisc. As the diskette was attempting to be read
I adjusted the head height and immediately the disk started to load. I
went back and adjusted the other two axis adjustments by sight to make
sure the head rode true on the surface.

 

[N_Cook]

Well let me know what you find. The S20 has no ROM based sounds so all
was loaded at and during performance via floppy. These floppies are
roughly the size of a Minidisc. As the diskette was attempting to be read
I adjusted the head height and immediately the disk started to load. I
went back and adjusted the other two axis adjustments by sight to make
sure the head rode true on the surface.

Standard PC 3.5 inch FD in the xp 60 . Removing it and poking around and
refitting I can save to a PC formatted disk and load back a "song" and read
as HEX files on a pc so perhaps stuck stepper spindle or connector problem.

 

[Meat Plow]

Standard PC 3.5 inch FD in the xp 60 . Removing it and poking around and
refitting I can save to a PC formatted disk and load back a "song" and
read as HEX files on a pc so perhaps stuck stepper spindle or connector
problem.

If it's standard it could be replaced with a PC drive, that's good.

 

[N_Cook]

In my experience, most (but not all) of these floppys are NOT standard PC
drives. Why this is/was the case I have never really understood. (Unless
it was for the manufacturers to make more money on spare parts). In your
case here, count yourself lucky!

I did once try and investigate whether it was possible to reconfigure
standard drives to work in various keyboards/samplers etc, but at the time
couldn't find enough data, or the time, to do so.



Gareth.

Do you mean non-3.5 inch or not directly swappable FD from a PC to one of
these?
I did not try an ex-PC FD in the Roland.
Noted the type as in the Roland as
Panasonic JU 257A 726P, not researched it, as the green FD front panel LED
was not lit before fiddling and did come on after fiddling and with it
return to function

 

[Meat Plow]

In my experience, most (but not all) of these floppys are NOT standard
PC drives. Why this is/was the case I have never really understood.
(Unless it was for the manufacturers to make more money on spare parts).
In your case here, count yourself lucky!

I did once try and investigate whether it was possible to reconfigure
standard drives to work in various keyboards/samplers etc, but at the
time couldn't find enough data, or the time, to do so.

I once installed a PC DVDRW in a stand alone DVD recorder. However
I used the control boards from the stand alone recorder on the
replacement drive. Both were LiteOn products, the drives were 99% the
same.

Knowing this to work one would assume that a standard 34 pin floppy would
interchange regardless of the unit. That is unless there is some
specialized ROM on a keyboard or synth drive.

 

[Meat Plow]

There are legions of Akai, Roland, Korg, Emu and Yamaha owners out there
that dearly wish this were true .....

I understand that. What I don't understand is why you failed to quote my
entire reply.

 

[Meat Plow]

Are you hoping one day to take over from Phil Allison?

Are you being purposefully evasive?

 

[Meat Plow]

Lets just leave it there, eh.

Ok but in the future please put some thought into your insults.

 

[Meat Plow]

Didn't think you could just leave it there.

Ah, a 'last word' obsesso. You're predictable.

 

[N_Cook]

In the early days of floppy interfaces, before PCs style drives became "the
standard", there were many annoying little variations that could stop a
floppy drive working when swapped about. Much of that persists in non-standard
drives used on things like keyboards. Why should they strive for compatibility
with PCs when we can avoid it and charge extra for a "special" drive?

It used to be that a floppy drive had multiple jumper sets (0.1") that could
be strapped to configure them, often to do with things like the logic around
which Drive Select (0,1,2,3) and whether the "motor enable" line would be
used. Some host systems didn't assert motor enable, so the drive would be
jumpered to run off JUST the drive select.

It was PCs, I think, that introduced the idea of no jumpers, no drive select,
just put a twist in the cable, which limited you to 2 "identical" drives. The
proper floppy spec allowed for 4, but each drive was jumpered differently, and
connected totally in parallel.

In the XT and early AT days the floppy controller boards could handle
two sets of two drives. Some controllers could be set to one of four
addresses for a maximum of 16 floppy drives on one computer.

This is before you get into weird drives that ran at 300 vs 600rpm and
that sort of thing, where to use them with a PC, some components needed to be
changed to re-set the rotation speed and frequency response to the data being
read back.

-

Mike Brown: mjb[-at-]signal11.org.uk | http://www.signal11.org.uk

I did notice 3 or 4 submin 2 or 3 way slide switches inside that Roland
Panasonic FDD, gives a goodly number of permutations

 

[N_Cook]

I just destroyed a Roland D-5 keyboard. What a piece of unrepairable
junk. Hopefully, the XP-60 is better built. I could not determine if
the XP-60 media uses 1.44MB or 720KB floppish. What is the make and
muddle drive that is stock for the Roland XP-60?
<http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/xp60.php>

I recently repaired a Korg DSS-1 with the traditional dead floppy disk
drive problem.
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/Korg_DSS-1/>
If your XP60 requires a 720KB floppy drive, instead of the usual
1.44MByte floppy drive, you have to find one that has suitable jumpers
available. This might also help:
<http://blog.retrosynth.com/archives/2005/08/fun_with_akai_m.html>
If you're lucky, the only jumper you'll need to move is the drive
select jumper, usually labeled DS0, DS1, DS2, and DS3. The common PC
drive is set to DS1. Most of the synthesizers I've played with use
DS0.

Oddly, all of the five or so synthesizers I've fixed that had floppy
drives have all had dead floppy disk drives. My guess(tm) is that
they die from static discharge while shoving the floppy into the
drive. That's what killed mine. I've thought of electroplating the
plastic front panel of the drive with metallic chrome or other metal,
to discharge the static before the floppy enters the drive.

--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

This one is back with its owner. The FDD would solenoid? click at power up
but no front LED, I assume a leads/connector problem unless a stuck spindle
could lead to lack of LED

 

[N_Cook]

1.44MB on this XP 60

 

[asdf]

In for a power supply fault but while in there, the floppy drive has
never worked. Would it be a standard PC drive? or known simple
repairable stock fault? It does klunk once, on pwering up , sort of PC
fashion

I had similar troubles with the S330 sampler floppy drive. A standard PC
one didn't work but someone told me that floppy drives with jumpers on
their back work if you set the right ones. Could not yet find a drive w/
jumpers to test if the advice was BS or not though.

 

[Mark Zenier]

As I remember, early Roland units used the 3 inch Hitachi 360k
byte minidisc. Electromechanically, they looked like the 5 1/4 inch
DD drives. (Half the bit rate, and 300 RPM). Other major users of
them were the Amstrad computers in the UK. And, I think, fancy sewing
machines of the time.

Mark Zenier mzenier@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

 

[Meat Plow]

As I remember, early Roland units used the 3 inch Hitachi 360k byte
minidisc. Electromechanically, they looked like the 5 1/4 inch DD
drives. (Half the bit rate, and 300 RPM). Other major users of them
were the Amstrad computers in the UK. And, I think, fancy sewing
machines of the time.

This is a Roland S10, don't know why S20 came to mind. Anyway you are
100% correct about the drive. I've done some research on it after owning
it for several years. It was given to me by a relative who had purchased
it new 20 some years ago. I have around 100 disks for it. It's a very
nice sounding unit. You can sample into it and it has a good arpeggio
function. Also works well with MIDI.