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Jimbo99

Posted Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:16 am

I contacted Paul. Thanks again, intric8. You are the best!!

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Jimbo99

Posted Wed Aug 01, 2018 8:34 am

Dalek,
Thanks again for great advice on the cooling.

To a10001986, your 2 cents are worth a lot to me. By GAL chips, I think those are the 9 or so rectangular little guys that cover most of the board left of the CPU. The one in the top, far left corner is the hottest. I agree with you that it's suspicious and the cooling fan is not likely to totally solve the problem.

I took the FZ357A apart. A bit of a Chinese puzzle putting it back together. There were a couple fairly big electrolytics, conventionally mounted through the board, but I saw no leakage, and don't remember any surface-mounted capacitors of the cylindrical type. Maybe I should look again. From reading I realize that this model may be the crown jewel of Amiga floppy drives. It is deader than a doornail. It never clicked when no disk present. Now the led is permanently off, used to be permanently on. I checked the voltages going in, and 5 volts and 12 volts were OK, though this drive may run on +5 and -5 volts, not sure. Couldn't find any schematics or service manual.

Does anybody know someone who works on the Chinon FZ357A?

Best regards,
Jim

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A10001986
1986

Posted Wed Aug 01, 2018 9:56 am

The GALs are all chips with a label sticking to them. They are not supposed to be hot, but .. well warm. So they were on my two A3640s anyway.

Don't worry about the floppy drive. HD discs, in my experience, don't usually hold data longer than a few hours (sometimes even only minutes, in rare cases not at all), so you are better off with a DD drive anyway. These are dead cheap, so in order to sell it as a working machine, just grab one of those $20 chinons 354s (privided it has a cover that matches in size).

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A10001986
1986

Posted Wed Aug 01, 2018 10:47 am

Jimbo99 wrote:Dalek,
From reading I realize that this model may be the crown jewel of Amiga floppy drives.
That would IMHO rather be the FB357A, predecessor to the FZ357A and big brother to my personal favorite, the DD-FB354.

I might as well be that my memory is mixed up, and that SMD bad boy was on the FB354A. The more I come to think of it, it very probably was. But anyway, the whole HD disc stuff is a crappy mess, and Amiga HD drives are not worth bothering, IMHO.

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Jimbo99

Posted Wed Aug 01, 2018 7:19 pm

Hello A10001986,

Thanks once again for giving this newbie the benefit of your years of experience with respect to the relative advantages of HD and DD type floppy drives. Do you recommend the FB354 or FZ354 or does it matter? Where are we grabbing them -- Ebay?

Very grateful for you advice,
Best,
Jim

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A10001986
1986

Posted Thu Aug 02, 2018 1:10 am

Well, I have not tested all available floppy drives for the Amiga range, and I sure others might have different opinions, but in my personal experience the Chinon FB-354 (provided it comes with a cover that fits; please be aware that I never had an A4000 and I therefore don't know the requirements) is very sturdy, easy to maintain and cheaply available (hint, hint - spare parts, especially springs for the mechanism, hint, hint). I bought all my drives on ebay. But again, never for the 4000. However, I'd guess that any drive offered for the A4000, as long as it's a DD drive, would do. If you had a way to find out if the height of the slot is identical to the A2000's slot (my guess would be that they are the same), drives for that machine - duh! - would fit as well. Electronically there is no difference.





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