In article ,
Michael Black wrote:
Bob Pownall ) writes:
sunshine wrote:
we are still using the obsolete HP4145B Parameter Analyzer. It's a
wonderful piece of equipment and it does the job.
Although it is hooked up to GPIB, it still needs the floppy drive with
a bootdisk. Unfortunately the floppy drive broke and Agilent does not
have any spare parts. Even though it is 3.5" it is not compatible with
the common PC floppy drives. Any idea to work around this (except
buying new equipment)?

Any comments are welcome.

You _might_ be able to cannibalize a 3.5" floppy out of another piece of
HP gear of similar vintage. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the
floppies were identical, or at least compatible.

Of course, it makes sense to figure out why the drives are different.
I once got some IBM 3.5" drives that were completely standard, except
the edge connector had 4 more contacts, for the power supply. It
was really easy to use them, I just had to fix up a suitable connector.

The first Sony 3-1/2 inch drives ran at 600 RPM, (so they had the same
data rate as an 8 inch drive). NEC did a special version of the '765
floppy controller chip for them.

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