replacing floppy drive with usb / floppy emulator

[jesterfish]

Hi Thowing this out for disscussion consideration ( shooting down in flames etc )

on a whim googled usb floppy emulator and serch cam back with http://www.ipcas.com/products/usb-floppy-emulator-fdd-to-udd.html which claims to directly replace ANY 3.5 floppy drive 1-to -1 the ipcas unit is around 249 euro £220.00 but have a look on e.bay non branded units at around £40.00 they all originate in china / asia

 

point is could we non usb fitted frog users retro fit these ..?? dimentions and fittings claim to be same as standard floppy case

warrenties for desk not withstanding etc

 

what about formatting issues ? not being a computer wizard myself

 

waiting for the mud to fly Jesterfish

[glenn]

I was thinking the same thing. I see no other repl.

[Jon Hole]

Hi both,

We have seen a fewcustomers try this and have success. However, this is not something that we can recommend or support.

[Ben_Weasel]

Jon,

 

Any chance you are going to ever support/ offer this?

[Jon Hole]

Hi Ben_Weasel,

 

The Fat Frog has been out of production for several years now. We've moved onto support current media (USB Memory Sticks for example). Although we still support our Fat Frog users, and still create the latest fixture profiles for Fat Frog users, we're not activity developing hardware for the Frog range of consoles.

 

Best Regards,

[Halo_djk]

Hello also have this problem now. 1.44 disks are getting real difficult to buy, and seem to fail after 6 months or so. The drives will also surely wear out, and be unable to be purchased.

 

We have two of your mambo frogs that function perfectly, but very soon we wont be able to back up shows, or move shows between desks.

 

We have tried one of the USB emulators from Ebay, but the desk just kept saying NO DISK, yet the drive has inbuilt memory. Formatting in the desk also would not work.

 

Need some suggestions on floppy emulators that work with the Frog series desks please.

[Jon Hole]

Need some suggestions on floppy emulators that work with the Frog series desks please.

 

This isn't something we can help with unfortunately, as I have never tried it myself, but hopefully one of our customers can help!

[Halo_djk]

Have purchased two of these drives http:www.hxc2001.free.fr/floppy_drive_emulator/‎ after testing one of our desks first to see if the drives would work. All seemed OK, so we ordered the second drive.

After installing both drives in both Mambo Frogs, one was working fine, the other was not, after a LOT of mucking around and fault finding, I have discovered that the issues are not with the floppy emulators, but are with the two Mambo Frogs!

 

It seems that we have two desks with the latest software 10.1 from memory, but one desk has a 2001 mainboard, the other has a 2004 mainboard. The drives (both of them) work fine in the 2004 mainboard, but in the 2001 unit, the drive reads for about 15 seconds, then the desk complains there is no disk. (Remember both desks, same software, exactly same config ect)

 

Is there some change in the 2004 board, that can be retrofitted to the 2001 mainboard perhaps. It seems that there is a difference in the way the mainboards talk to the floppy drives that upset the communication, even though the emulator communicates exactly like a Floppy drive. Maybe this is the Panasonic issue that affects the emulators as well on the Floppy Emulators?

 

Any suggestions? Don't want to waste $250 on drives we cannot use, and desks that will soon be useless as we have now run out of floppy disks.

[iank99]

I can understand your frustration and the problem may well be the difference between the two mainboards used in desks of that vintage. I doubt very much that there's any sort of retrofit to be done with the 2001 desk short of finding a late model mainboard from a scrap desk and transplanting it - at least then the hardware in each would be the same vintage.

 

In the cold light of day though - it's a 12 year old desk - certainly in accountancy terms, it has no 'book' value and whilst it's still working fine doing it's job - you do find it difficult to say "Sorry old friend - time to replace you..." I suspect though that this is where the story will ultimately end, in the same way that it did for floppy drives in PC's.

[vendetta]

Hello,

 

For all those who are asking themselves the question if it's possible.
I did it this weekend. Just ordered a "GOTEK" Emulator (same as Ipcas only much cheaper) from Ebay.

Opened the desk swapped the data cable cause it was to short and booted up.

Works fine!

Some other advantages:

I couldn't update my OS from 10.10 to 10.12 cause he couldn't find the disk . After the swap updated from the first time.

 

Some pics:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q4lr052bvkybz68/20130606_162047.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0316i9gj31142u8/20130606_162056.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zfiehikjtgub0v4/20130606_162135.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cv17ww6ybyiwudb/20130606_163904.jpg

 

Grtz from Belgium

[NickTaylor]

Vendetta.

 

I planning on going down the usb route and have a unit waiting to try once the current show is done. I have to say the only bad thing I have ever come across with Zero 88 kit over maybe 20 years is the floppy frives in the Frog desks. It seems they were bought as a dodgy batch as having to format in the desk to make sure the data could then be read is totally contrary with history of 3.5 disks, they are supposed to be interchageable. Each time I want to add another fixture for instance we scrabble around trying to get a floppy to actually work!

I note my replacement unit came with a disk, I assume with some drivers. Were there any issues installing the unit?

[John in Linlithgow]

Faced with the problem of downloading info to elderly Zero 88 & ETC (sorry) desks, I bought a brand new FDD with USB lead off ebay. Works a treat! i suppose I'm lucky because I have several floppy discs. I have only had to replace one FDD in a Frog, which I suspect was damaged by someone trying to remove a disc mid-write.

 

John in Linlithgow

[NickTaylor]

Put the drive in no problem. I can format and save a show but at the moment cant get it to recognise fixtures off the usb stick. In parallel I have just reinstalled windows on the pc with the fixture tools, so it could be the ift files are corrupted

Any ideas chaps?

 

I had not realized there were buttons on the usb drive. I toggled through to 00 as the adress and all fine.