Two dead Megafile 30's - options for MF drives?

[macsonny]

Hi All,

 

I have two Megafile 30's both with dead hard drives. I actually have 3 x MFM drives but they have all failed in some way. Not much chance to salvage I suspect.

 

I was wondering if anyone knows of a relatively cheap solution to replace these drives? I know I can use lots of SD options directly - but I like the looks an feel of the Megadrive so looking to replace the drive internally.

 

Any options?

[Tillek]

I think "cheap" is the hard part.  There are MFM drive emulators that will "replace" an MFM drive with a more modern storage solution, but they tend to come in at the $200-$250 mark.

 

http://www.pdp8online.com/mfm/index.shtml

 

https://decromancer.ca/mfm-emulator/

 

That said, from time to time I have noticed some not to overly priced MFM drives on eBay, but then you're just taking chances on how long it will last.

 

What I'd love to do, but don't have the time... is come up with a replacement board based on some of t0ri's resurrection projects for the ICD SCSI adapters and come up with a form factor that would directly replace the board in the MF drives so you would have a real SCSI adapter for use with real SCSI drives or any variety of SCSI2CF/SCSI2SD whatever.

 

Alas.

 

[Zogging Hell]

My thought when mine go was to hotwire an Ultrasatan into one... which I think would involve gutting it and then have the Ultrasatan connect directly to the ACSI port via soldering a ribbon cable to it. I would then try and keep the power supply and fan for the hurricane/ heat effect! I will probably need to desolder the ACSI port from the Megafile 'motherboard' though to reuse it. The only thing this would loose is the hard drive access noises, which are very distinctive and I will miss those when they are gone.

 

I suppose those MFM drives really are dead? Sometimes they just stick and require oiling... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dErXDjMJ2dA . Worth a try if it is the nostalgia that your after.

 

[+DarkLord]

Why not just use one of Lotharek's internal Ultrasatans and adapter boards instead of the "gutting" and "hotwire" options? 

 

 

[351cougar]

if the goal is to replace 1 to 1 the soothing whirr of rotating media, youd need some sort of acsi / scsi to ide / sata adapter. What was not mentioned was drive size. If intention is to keep to mostly stock (60Mb max? ) that really hamstrings you. 

[Atari030]

I put a Link in mine and used a SCSI drive. I had thought it would be possible to create a SCSI adapter from Tori's reversed schematics and reengineer for a Megafile footprint. You could use SCSI or bluescsi etc then. Other option is to drop an ACSI2STM in there.

MFM was notoriously bad back in the day.

[Zogging Hell]

22 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Why not just use one of Lotharek's internal Ultrasatans and adapter boards instead of the "gutting" and "hotwire" options? 

 

 

You are probably quite right, I'm a bit out of the loop on Ultrasatans, I brought two of the older 'Satandisks' some time ago and have not played with the newer model!

[JamesWD]

On 4/22/2024 at 12:16 PM, macsonny said:

Hi All,

 

I have two Megafile 30's both with dead hard drives. I actually have 3 x MFM drives but they have all failed in some way. Not much chance to salvage I suspect.

 

I was wondering if anyone knows of a relatively cheap solution to replace these drives? I know I can use lots of SD options directly - but I like the looks an feel of the Megadrive so looking to replace the drive internally.

 

Any options?

Define 'dead', won't spinup or just Atari can't see it?

 

I had 2 'dead' megafiles, one was saved by low-level formatting, the other was left on for an hour then it came to life (both obviously could spin).

 

Adrians digital basement (he has two channels) on youtube has loads of videos of bring back MFM drives from the dead well worth a look before you chuck them away.