Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

Suggest contacting HP directly and ask if they have a part source or a
viable alternative that will be fiscally acceptable.
"sunshine" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

AJ wrote:

Suggest contacting HP directly and ask if they have a part source or a
viable alternative that will be fiscally acceptable.


HP makes personal computers. Agilent was spun off as a test
equipment company a LONG time ago.


"sunshine" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David



--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

sunshine wrote:

Hi,

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)?


Are there any OEM markings on the bad floppy drive? HP/Agilent may
not have been the only one to use that drive.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

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.

Bob Pownall

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

Also, there was a related thread in the sci.engr.semiconductors group
about a year ago.

hp 4145A and 4145B semiconductor parametric analyzers
OP: Winfield Hill
Date: 8/4/2006

You might be able to come up with some useful information there. Heck,
a post to sci.engr.semiconductors might be worth a shot.

Bob Pownall

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

sunshine wrote:
Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David

Try a floppy disc from an old ie mid 80's computer, HP9121 floppy drive
(there are a series of these GPIB connected floppys) HP150 computer etc.

Andrew

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

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.

But of course, there were lots of runners up in the 3.5" market, and if
these are of that type, then that is likely more complicated. But
even then, it would depend on the drive.

Michael

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 10:17:23 -0700, sunshine put
finger to keyboard and composed:

Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David

I once modified the floppy drive interface in a Commodore Amiga to
accommodate a PC FDD. The differences in that particular case were the
Ready and Diskchange pins (2 & 34).

Maybe yours has a Shugart interface (2nd table):
http://pinouts.ru/Storage/InternalDisk_pinout.shtml

The first table is for a standard IBM FDD.

If you are lucky, and the differences are in the Ready and Diskchange
pins, then you *may* be able to find a FDD that can be jumpered for
either interface.

Otherwise this simple circuit worked for me:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp....986e1ff?hl=en&

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

probably just a common older 750kb single sided 3.5 inch drive.

tear it apart, extract the floppy drive and hack in an ebay unit from some
surplus dealer of seller.

that actually may be harder to find since it is "dated"


"sunshine" wrote in message
ups.com...
Hi,

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.

Thanks,
David

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Jul 31, 1:17 pm, sunshine wrote:
Hi,

we are still using the obsolete HP4145B Parameter Analyzer. ... 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.

Some HP equipment used a controller board with odd connector, under a
standard
Sony mechanism. Early Macintosh (800k) floppy disks were similar in
the
mechanisms, but not the controllers. You can find a similar SONY part
and
swap the controllers. Maybe.

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

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)

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:00:30 GMT "HapticZ" wrote
in Message id: :

probably just a common older 750kb single sided 3.5 inch drive.

They were double-sided double-density drives. The published capacity was
630Kbytes.

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

Hi there,

I opened the box and found that the floppy drive is a Sony MP-F52W-20
drive. I tried to find such a used drive on ebay and so on but it
seems very challenging Does anyone know a good website were you can
look up compatibility with other/newer floppy drives?

Thanks!
David

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

"sunshine" wrote in message
ps.com...
Hi there,

I opened the box and found that the floppy drive is a Sony MP-F52W-20
drive. I tried to find such a used drive on ebay and so on but it
seems very challenging Does anyone know a good website were you can
look up compatibility with other/newer floppy drives?

Thanks!
David



Most floppy drives are electrically identical, there's not really anything
in the way of intelligence in the drive. Assuming it has a standard 34 pin
interface cable, I'd try plugging in a generic PC drive and see what
happens.

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:55:18 -0700, sunshine put
finger to keyboard and composed:

Hi there,

I opened the box and found that the floppy drive is a Sony MP-F52W-20
drive. I tried to find such a used drive on ebay and so on but it
seems very challenging Does anyone know a good website were you can
look up compatibility with other/newer floppy drives?

Thanks!
David

The prognosis doesn't look good:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiw...cgi?read=32300

It looks like yours is a 600 RPM drive. There is a pinout at the
bottom of the page.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:35:07 GMT, "James Sweet" wrote:

Most floppy drives are electrically identical, there's not really anything
in the way of intelligence in the drive. Assuming it has a standard 34 pin
interface cable, I'd try plugging in a generic PC drive and see what
happens.

I tried that some years ago with the Sony drive in a 16500A.
It did not work.

regards, Gerhard

Floppy drive broken in HP4145B Parameter Analyzer
 

On Aug 7, 5:53 am, Gerhard Hoffmann wrote:
On Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:35:07 GMT, "James Sweet" wrote:
Most floppy drives are electrically identical, there's not really anything
in the way of intelligence in the drive. Assuming it has a standard 34 pin
interface cable, I'd try plugging in a generic PC drive and see what
happens.

I tried that some years ago with the Sony drive in a 16500A.
It did not work.

regards, Gerhard

I used to get some working by cleaning the mechanisms with alchohol
(head cleaner) and lubricating the mechaism with an oil that creeps.
Clean the heads too. I've seen a sewing machine mechanic use a mixture
of Isopropyl and Automatic Transmission fluid. He had a squirt bottle
with a 50 / 50 blend.