A few weeks back, I placed a post on the board regarding an upgrade that would allow the 1.4 Meg floppy drive units
to be replaced by a USB Flash drive. I have completed my testing now and have the conversion installed.
It is working perfectly on my SU-500 (Royale) and is a major improvement, in my opinion, for the following reasons:
• I won't ever need floppies anymore and yet I'll be able to secure a guaranteed long-
term future for my instrument.
• The old floppy disk drive is replaced 1:1. The connections are identical, so no additional
changes have to be made to the instrument.
• The USB Stick and the USB Floppy Converter replaces the old disk drive entirely.
• USB memory components have long life spans and high capacities.
• The new USB floppy drives and USB memory components are practically immune to
impacts, magnetic fields, dust or shock.
• The contents of 100 floppies can easily be placed on one single USB Stick. That saves a
lot of time looking for the correct floppy and money to purchase the disks.
• The cost to upgrade is considerably less than the cost to purchase a new instrument.
• The time required to install the upgrade was less than an hour on my instrument.
Disadvantages of legacy diskettes:
• The old floppy disk drive is slow and takes several seconds to transfer data.
• The diskettes are hardly available at retailers anymore.
• They are sensitive to magnetic fields, dust, oil and other adverse environmental conditions.
• They suffer from mechanical wear and tear, and can generate noise when accessed.
• They have low memory capacity.
The "Installation/Operational" manual has been completed and is available in PDF format. It contains step by step instructions,
and photographs of each step I took in removing the old floppy drive and replacing it with the Floppy to USB conversion drive.
The pictures, along with the explanations, show how the conversion drive works after it is installed. In addition,
the 5 simple hand tools required are shown and listed.
If you are interested, or have additional questions, *please send me an email and I will try to respond as soon as possible.
* Clicking on this link will open your default Email Client.
Larry
W. Millholland, Sr.