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I'm trying to format a MFD-2DD floppy on a 370A . press 'FAST/SHIFT' screen says... press 'SAVE' I press 'SAVE' and then the 370A displays ' FORMAT BUSY' goes about formatting the floppy 1 to 80 . The floppy drive light turns on during formatting as would be expected.
When it gets to 80 , the display screen ' FORMAT ERROR. ' I have tried multiple 1.44 MB floppies as well : old ones and new ones.
I bought a low density floppy from AMAZON as well with the same errors .
I get the same results, 'FORMAT ERROR' once the 370A gets to track 80. Has anyone ever experienced this problem ? Is it a bad drive ?
I'm new to the equipment. It was gifted to the school where I am the lab assistant. Any help would be appreciated.

William Foley

Hi William,

I remember having had similar problems on a Tek AM700. It has a slimline 3" Floppy. It *did* format the floppy, but was unable to read or write. Tried different drives. It worked only when formatting the floppy outside the unit on a very old Mac (running MacOS 8).

Here is the thread:


cheers
Martin

Thank you for the info. I have a PENTIUM II pc and it formatted the 720k disks, but I got a new error message.
"FD WRITE ERROR" and "FD READ ERROR" I'll try formatting the floppies again... and let you know.
Has anyone tried to use an emulator for the 370A and which one do you recommend ?
William

There are no new floppy disks, they've not been made in decades. You'd have bought some ancient stock.

Heads may need cleaned , if belt drive then may be slipping.

Gotek is the modern alternative, pretends to be a floppy using a usb stick

Thank you for the information. I will look into GOTEK. I think that is the easiest option.
thank you David !

When you tried the 1.44mb floppies, did you tape over the hole? I assume you did since you knew it only supported 720k floppies, but in case your 720k floppies are bad and you didn't try it with the 1.44's, might be worth a shot.

"The floppy drives in 370A/371A support 720K diskettes only. To use 1.44M media, tape over the empty hole in the upper left corner of the diskette (i.e. the one opposite the write protect switch)."

There's some funkyness WRT to the coercivity of 720K disks vs 144Mb
disks that I don't recall the specifics of off hand. But the gist
is, the tape trick isn't known for its effectiveness.

On Mon, Feb 3, 2025 at 8:40?AM pac1085 via groups.io
<pac1085@...> wrote:

When you tried the 1.44mb floppies, did you tape over the hole? I assume you did since you knew it only supported 720k floppies, but in case your 720k floppies are bad and you didn't try it with the 1.44's, might be worth a shot.

"The floppy drives in 370A/371A support 720K diskettes only. To use 1.44M media, tape over the empty hole in the upper left corner of the diskette (i.e. the one opposite the write protect switch)."

It really has more to do with the physical width of the read-write heads on a 1.44Mb drive .vs. a 720Mb drive. The track width of the read-write head is much narrower on a 1.44Mb drive than it is on a 720Mb drive. When using a 1.44Mb formatted diskette on a 720Mb drive, this typically has the effect of causing the previously written data (or noise) to show up on either side of the formatted track. This issue will cause read problems for the drive controller. For best results, you should always try to format the diskette using the type of drive in which it's to be used. Barring that, the diskette being used should be either a new un-formatted diskette, or should be bulk erased to remove any previous data prior to use.

All the best,
Bill W4WHW

Gotcha, just suggested it since tektronix specifically mentioned that method in a FAQ on their site:

Good luck! I had a floppy drive with strange issues like this in my tds5054b and replacement of the drive is ultimately what fixed it.