I've replaced the original floppy drive twice, each time by Roland in Sydney, Australia.
The two dud drives are a TEAC FD-235HF-7527 and a TEAC FD-235HF-C527,
although I've also read that the "original" original was a 6527.
Not just any 235HF series model will do, it has to be the right one.
I also know from Roland that one of those replacement models required a
modification to the circuitry, too.
Anyway, several hours of Googling has revealed that, apart from the 7291,
none of the other drives are in existence, unless you want to pay a zillion
dollars on eBay for a used one.
The Uniflash product seems like the only feasible solution. But 180 euros.
So, I need to know if anyone else can confirm that a 7291 will work.
I took delivery of a 7291 drive and tried it in my XP-50....didn't work at all.
The original link I posted above now seems rather confusing.
Did the bloke transplant 6527 parts into the 7291, or was it the
reverse? The more I read the link, the more confused I am.
Anyway, happy ending for me as I managed to source a used 6527 last week.
Before that, I bought a TEAC USB external floppy drive which allows me to
transfer my XP-50 file archive onto my hard drive in my Mac, so all is now
saved and burned to CD-ROM.
As well, from here on I'm going to save all work-in-progress XP-50 sequences as
MIDI dumps into my DAW, by-passing the onboard floppy drive anyway.
Finally, on an unrelated issue, my techie here in Hong Kong advises all
XP-50 owners to replace all the capacitors on their mother board. These things
leak and then fail, causing fatal damage to the unit. In his workshop
he has an elephant's graveyard of dead XP-50s, none of which can be fixed, but
good for parts, etc.
He has replaced all the capacitors in my XP, which also cleaned up the audio output.
I took delivery of a 7291 drive and tried it in my XP-50....didn't work at all.
The original link I posted above now seems rather confusing.
Did the bloke transplant 6527 parts into the 7291, or was it the
reverse? The more I read the link, the more confused I am.
Anyway, happy ending for me as I managed to source a used 6527 last week.
Before that, I bought a TEAC USB external floppy drive which allows me to
transfer my XP-50 file archive onto my hard drive in my Mac, so all is now
saved and burned to CD-ROM.
As well, from here on I'm going to save all work-in-progress XP-50 sequences as
MIDI dumps into my DAW, by-passing the onboard floppy drive anyway.
Finally, on an unrelated issue, my techie here in Hong Kong advises all
XP-50 owners to replace all the capacitors on their mother board. These things
leak and then fail, causing fatal damage to the unit. In his workshop
he has an elephant's graveyard of dead XP-50s, none of which can be fixed, but
good for parts, etc.
He has replaced all the capacitors in my XP, which also cleaned up the audio output.
Regards,
Jet
Unless you are really knowledgeable about floppy drives, I would not recommend trying to perform the kind of surgery described in that DR5 thread. It will likely result in two broken drives, depending on how much apart you take them.
Roland US says that the only part number they have for the XP-50 floppy drive is FD-235HF-5327 and that if there were any other compatible models, they'd have it in their database. Did the 6527 work once installed?
