SY85 floppy disk drive problems

N

notsram

New member
I have a 1992 Yamaha SY85, which I haven't touched for at least ten years. Having recently decided to get back into playing and recording, I fired up the synth to see if it still worked.

All the sounds are still in memory from the last time I used it, and it seems to play as well as ever. However, there's a problem with the disk drive. When I try to access a disk, the drive whirrs for a second, then comes up with a 'disk not ready' error message. I'm not sure at this point whether the disks have aged beyond being readable, or whether it's the drive itself. I'll buy some new floppies to see if it can at least format them, but in the meantime, I thought I'd just ask if anyone has had any experience with this sort of thing?

I do have a CD I burned years ago with the original soundsets on, and a few others. If the drive is broken, can I dump these over midi to the synth?


*edit* Having done a bit of research, it now sounds like the problem may well be the drive belt. I've found a place in America which sells them, but I'm in the UK. Anyone know of a place in the UK which sells drive belts?
 
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I had a similar problem with the disk drive in my old Korg DSS-1 keyboard sampler I fired up about a month ago. It would go through the motions of seeming to read the disk, clickety, clickety, click, but would fail with a message like you got. I pulled it out and disassembled it. Found that the grease/lube on the rails the head mechanism rides back and forth on was pretty dried up and not allowing the mechanism to move. Put some light oil on it and it works for now. On ebay a seller has replacement FF drives for $40 for the DSS-1 which I might do just to have a spare. You are probably correct about the drive belt as that is a common issue on a lot of old gear like this.

I probably ought to give my SY85, SY77, and TG77 a try to see if those have problems :confused:.

If the files you have on the CD have an extension like ***.G01, ***.W01 or similar, you likely can't load them up via MIDI as they aren't in a sysex format that can be bulk dumped. Not sure in my collection if I have any sysex type files.

Don't forget in your quest for floppies, they are 720k, not the 1.4m. Although you can cover the hole on a 1.4m to make it think it's a 720k.

In the back of my mind I recall having some problems with reading/writing Yamaha floppies when Windows OS's were changing. I can't recall if it was the SY85 or another Yammy I have. I would put a floppy that was readable by the Yammy keyboard into the computer floppy drive and while it was being read it wrote some bits to the FAT area on the floppy and subsequently couldn't be read by the Yammy keyboard. I'll see if I can dig up info on this. There was a disk utility specifically for this that fixed the FAT bits somehow.

I semi-organized the patches I've got and I'll put them up somewhere and PM you a link to get them.

A few ebay items.....
Floppy Drive Belt for Yamaha MDF 2 SY85 Eme 213 Korg PSR Etc | eBay

Yamaha SY85 Synth Keyboard Replacement Floppy Disk Drive New | eBay

Nalbantov USB Floppy Disk Drive Emulator for Yamaha SY 85 | eBay
***************************************************************
Retro Friday: The 720k Floppy Disk - PCMech
"Can 720k diskettes be read and written to in Windows 7?

Yes – if the floppy is formatted first in a format Windows can understand.

Can 720k diskettes be formatted in Windows 7?

Since Windows XP, the option to format 720k floppies was eliminated from the GUI – however you can format a 720k disk using the command line with very specific switches.

The command is this: FORMAT A: /T:80 /N:9

This formats 80 tracks with 9 sectors per track, and yes it does work.

Can a 1.44MB floppy be "fooled" into being formatted to 720k in Windows 7?

Yes. Place a piece of tape over the left-side hole, as in the one without the write protect switch on it, then place in the drive and format using the command above and you’ve got yourself a 720k formatted disk:"

************************************************************************
Index of /midi/yamaha/sy85
 
Thanks very much for this. I'll be taking apart the SY85 (not looking forward to that - whenever I take a piece of equipment apart, I ALWAYS have at least one screw left over) to check/replace the drive belt (I've ordered one from one of the Ebay sellers you kindly linked - even if it's not that at faullt, it'll be good to have a spare), so I'll check the lubrication on the drive at the same time. The Ebay seller is only about 50 miles from me, so with a bit of luck, the belt should be with me in a day or so.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure the SY85 has a DD drive. Not at home to check, but I'm all but certain the original disks that I have are DD. It was a long time ago, but I seem to remember being able to read and write to floppies on my PC and then access them on my SY85 without any problems or having to use the old tape over the hole trick.

I won't be buying any floppies just yet. I'm hopeful that the drive will work once it's had bit of maintenance, and I have about 20 disks to try out. I also have a very old disk head cleaning kit which I'll use if/when the drive is up and running again. In the meantime, I don't want to risk deleting the sounds that are currently in memory until I'm certain I can get them back.

If the drive is still dead after I've oiled it and given it a new drive belt, it'll maybe be time to look into replacing the drive completely. Won't be cheap, but I really do love this keyboard and it'll be worth the money.

Thanks again for your advice. I really appreciate it :)
 
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Hello,

Just to set the record straight.

The hole on the HD disk CAN be covered up as described, but the hole changes more than JUST the copacity of the disk (number of sectors per track). It also changes certain parameters in the actual magnetic characteristics of the read/write process to suit the quite different magnetic properties of the HD disk compared to the DD disk.

So, yes, if the hole is covered, you may well be able to format a HD disk as DD, and then write to it as DD, and read back, but this will not be reliable. It may work today, and fail in a few weeks time. Some makes of disk may work better than others. If using HD disks as DD, you should bear this in mind.

There is info/testing on the web that explains all this, something to do with the different coercivity (sp?) of the disks. Hold the two disk types up to the light, and you will see that the magnetic material inside the two disk types is clearly different, in that the HD is a LOT thinner (but is I think magnetically much more sensitive).

I looked yesterday, someone on the web is advertising the DD drive for the SY85 (and other machines as well).

I don't know how the disks you have are formatted, but if they could be read on a PC then that's still an option to at least protect the data. I have old PCs and software that allows me to read just about anything, certainly any PC or CP/M format. It may well be possible to convert data into SYSEX, if it is not SYSEX already.

Geoff
 
Thanks Geoff, that's more stuff for me to bear in mind.

My first priority is to see if I can resurrect the floppy drive. I'm hoping that a new drive belt and a bit of very light oiling/cleaning will coax it back into life. If the floppy drive doesn't work, after that then I'll have to look into getting a replacement.

I'm hoping that if the drive works, I'll be able to access the 20 or so rather ancient floppies that I have with patches etc. on them. IIRC they were all formatted on the SY85, but were still readable on my PC. That was a long time ago though. I could well be wrong.

Hopefully, I'll be up and running before the end of the week :)
 
OK.

Firstly, I'm happily using disks MUCH more than 10 years old, maybe even 30+ years, and they still read back OK, although I've had the occasional problem. So I'd say it's more likely the drive IS the problem, not the disk. If you've still got a PC with a floppy drive (not a given these days) then you could always check the disk in the PC. All my PCs have a 3.5" drive, some even still have 5.25" drives, wouldn't have it any other way.

None of the 3.5" drives I've had have had a belt, but I understand that some older models did, and the 'special' drives that are advertised are 'special' in that they are the correct vintage (which includes connectors, and I understand having belts, and maybe other things).

I'd say there are three things to check first, firstly the belt, which seems likely. Secondly, as already stated, the worm thread that moves the head assembly may need a little oil (VERY little) although sometimes repeated tries can gradually free it up. Thirdly, one of the sensors may be clogged up with dust, so a bit of a 'blow-job' might help - I've certainly had cases where a drive didn't work, then after a sharp blow or two, did work!

If you need any disks reading, let me know.

Geoff
 
5.25" disks? I remember those! Used to buy the single sided ones when I was a skint student, then use a hole punch to knock out where the tab should be for the second side and voila, double sided disk :)

I don't have a floppy drive on my PC these days. Not had a need for one in donkeys years. Until now! If I can get the SY85 drive working, I'll invest in a USB floppy drive. As you know, I'm already going to oil the drive and give it a new belt, but never thought to give it a 'blow job', even though it used to be the first thing I'd try if a disk wasn't reading correctly. I'll give that a go!

Thanks very much for that link. If I can't get the drive to work, those SYEMB06 cards look like and ideal replacement... not to mention being cheaper than a replacement floppy drive.
 
Well, I downloaded the first system disk, and I've just been looking at it.

Firstly, the notes suggest that the disk is a standard PC 2DD disk, which can be formatted on either a PC or on the SY85. So, should be no problem reading your disks on something, an external 3.5" drive should be OK too.

Secondly, the data file is NOT SYSEX, it looks like a type of raw memory dump. So, if you need to do so, you would need the other disk available from the sector101 site with the data in SYSEX format.

You referred to having trouble with the disks before. I think I can guess why that is. WinDoze!

One of the (many ??) disagreeable habits of WinDoze is that whenever it accesses a floppy, if the marker data in the first sector is NOT what it likes, i.e. showing an acceptable code for DOS or Windows, then WinDoze will re-write the data there to suit itself. This may be OK if the disk is to be used now ONLY in WinDoze, but in your case, as soon as you try to access the disk back in the SY85, then the disk appears to be an incorrect/invalid format and may be rejected.

Why WinDoze does this, I do not know. It's totally un-neccessary. Stupid even? Causes no end of trouble.

Geoff
 
GeoffB17 said:
One of the (many ??) disagreeable habits of WinDoze is that whenever it accesses a floppy, if the marker data in the first sector is NOT what it likes, i.e. showing an acceptable code for DOS or Windows, then WinDoze will re-write the data there to suit itself. This may be OK if the disk is to be used now ONLY in WinDoze, but in your case, as soon as you try to access the disk back in the SY85, then the disk appears to be an incorrect/invalid format and may be rejected.

Why WinDoze does this, I do not know. It's totally un-neccessary. Stupid even? Causes no end of trouble.

Geoff
Click to expand...
This is what I'm recalling and somewhere I believe I had a utility in the form of a *.bat file that fixed the sector after being accessed by Windoze. I've got to take a look on my old archived hard drives and see if I can dig this up. Can't remember if it was the SY85 disks it buggered or the SY77 and/or TG77 disks. If I recall correctly Yamaha used a slight variation of MS-DOS in some of their gear.
 
A .bat file does ring a bell, actually. And yes, Windoze can be a royal pain in the butt at times. Shame I hate Macs so much or I'd be tempted to switch :p
 
My problem is at least semi-solved. Now that my midi is working correctly, I managed to do a Sysex dump of all the Factory sounds to my SY85 and they're all working now. Half of them were corrupted when I tried the disk drive and the synth attempted to load new sounds in....

Got a dispatch email from Ebay last night to say that my drive belt is on the way. Will hopefully arrive today/tomorrow and I can try to get the drive fixed.
 
As you've already admitted to the fact that you're no tech with this stuff -- and hey, you don't have to be -- you may be ahead approaching things a different way.

A couple of things. MOST synths of that era use a standard Sony drive. When you see flea-bay ads for disk drives that fit this model or that, you're paying for the cross reference is about all. They fish those drives through several titles (Kurzweil, Yamaha, Ensoniq, etc) to see who bites. It's the same drive you can buy from the local Mac geek for $10... it usually is, anyway. Plug and play. Nothing special.

Ditch the drive. If it works, fine. If not, fine. Yamaha has some of the best MIDI implementation in the business. Get yourself a Editor and Librarian for the unit. Again, Mac is a better setup from that era, but perhaps PC has something to offer. I have lots of hard copy sounds for my synths. Plug in cards; discs; cartridges; even some cassette tapes! These were once used ONE TIME to load the sounds into the synth and then puke them back out over MIDI into my Librarian. Never again were the hard copies used.

I even have what is perhaps the singlemost cantankerous beast ever built, the Roland D-70. Its panel is horrible. Its opsys is dreadful. The programming is a abysmal. Worse yet, it's nothing remotely close to a D-50. But i keep it as sound module, basically, and do absolutely everything over MIDI with it. If i need new sounds, I just load the bundle i want. Takes a mere 6:20minutes over Opcode Galaxy, but it works every time.

So chase it down, if you must. Heck, why not have a synth with everything working in it? But once you get into working these old synths remotely, you'll wonder why you ever worried about a disc drive.

Now, what i'm hoping for is someone comes up with a 3.5" drive retrofit that accepts a USB stick. I'd install that everywhere i could.


Ponder 5

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Ponder5 said:
As you've already admitted to the fact that you're no tech with this stuff -- and hey, you don't have to be -- you may be ahead approaching things a different way.

A couple of things. MOST synths of that era use a standard Sony drive. When you see flea-bay ads for disk drives that fit this model or that, you're paying for the cross reference is about all. They fish those drives through several titles (Kurzweil, Yamaha, Ensoniq, etc) to see who bites. It's the same drive you can buy from the local Mac geek for $10... it usually is, anyway. Plug and play. Nothing special.

Ditch the drive. If it works, fine. If not, fine. Yamaha has some of the best MIDI implementation in the business. Get yourself a Editor and Librarian for the unit. Again, Mac is a better setup from that era, but perhaps PC has something to offer. I have lots of hard copy sounds for my synths. Plug in cards; discs; cartridges; even some cassette tapes! These were once used ONE TIME to load the sounds into the synth and then puke them back out over MIDI into my Librarian. Never again were the hard copies used.

I even have what is perhaps the singlemost cantankerous beast ever built, the Roland D-70. Its panel is horrible. Its opsys is dreadful. The programming is a abysmal. Worse yet, it's nothing remotely close to a D-50. But i keep it as sound module, basically, and do absolutely everything over MIDI with it. If i need new sounds, I just load the bundle i want. Takes a mere 6:20minutes over Opcode Galaxy, but it works every time.

So chase it down, if you must. Heck, why not have a synth with everything working in it? But once you get into working these old synths remotely, you'll wonder why you ever worried about a disc drive.

Now, what i'm hoping for is someone comes up with a 3.5" drive retrofit that accepts a USB stick. I'd install that everywhere i could.


Ponder 5

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Click to expand...

Very good advice! And pretty much what I'm hoping to do. It's not so much that I'm a complete tech novice, more that everything I knew is 20 years out of date and/or forgotten :p I've got no qualms about taking the synth apart and trying to fix the drive.

if I can get the drive working (hoping the drive belt will arrive today!), I've got the synth talking to my PC via Midi, so I'll be getting hold of some Librarian software, loading up as many disks as still work and bulk uploading them onto my PC. I've already done a Sysex dump of the default factory sounds to my synth as I deleted a load of stuff when trying to get the drive to work, so I know that will work. If it doesn't work, I'll lose a lot of stuff that I created years ago, but that's not the end of the world.
 
So... The drive belt arrived. I got the Sy85 back off, no problem. I got the disk drive out of it's housing, no problem. Disconnected it, no problem.

Then came the bit where I have to unscrew the PCB from the disk drive to allow me to move it a few MM, giving enough space to loop the new belt round the spindle. 4/5 of the screws came out easily. The last one... stuck solid and I've damaged the head of the screw trying to get it to come loose. If I mess around with it, I'm only going to make it even worse (and possibly damage the PCB), so I'm going to take it into a phone repair store tomorrow and see if they can help.

*sigh* still no working disk drive for me!
 
Well, I got the drive repaired. Guy in the phone shop wouldn't touch it, so took it to a computer repair store. Took him all of 2 minutes.

So, new belt put in, spindles very lightly oiled and turning freely, blow job given and... still the same error message.

So, when funds allow, I'll either buy a new drive or, more likely, spend slightly more and get a USB interface to replace the disk drive completely

In the meantime, I've downloaded a load of Sysex files. Which, of course, don't work. Pretty sure this is due to the ROM in my SY85. I have one of the very early ones, with the 1.10 ROM and apparently there's a bug in the way it handles Midi dumps, meaning that any soundset created with a newer ROM won't transfer correctly to my synth. Luckily, the Sector 101 site has a factory set from the 1.10 ROM, so I can at least use those in the meantime.

So, I'm now trawling the net looking for sysex files that work with my particular ROM. Fun... :)
 
Joining the Broken Floppy Drive Club

Well I got to pulling the old SY85 out of the closet. Powered up and still had all the internal patches (still love its sound!!). Decided its time to try and format a floppy. Err... no go, just sat and finally threw an error message.
Set the SY85 aside and pulled the SY77 out of the closet. Powered up and still had all the internal patches. Decided its time to try and format a floppy. Err... no go, just sat with the red light on.
Next up is the Roland D20. Repeat performance with another floppy drive not reading or formatting a disk.
A couple more keyboards and rack synths with floppy drives to check and I ran out of ambition to do it this afternoon.
Gear I bought around 1993 should last longer :mad:
 
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