Maxell LS120 SuperDisk Driver

Hi,

Does anyone know of a driver for the Maxell SuperDisk Drive for Windows XP? Maxell stopped supporting this drive just prior to XP so they never wrote a driver. I have tried IOmega (IOmagic?) driver but it doesn't work. A search of this forum for Maxell does not get any hits.

Thanks,

Bob Schoner

 

have you tried to see whether xp has built in drivers for your Superdisk drive?

Power down your system, plug the drive in, reload and it may get detected by windows, otherwise you can run the add new hardware wizard in the control panel.

Is it an ide internal or parallel external drive? If internal, have you set the jumpers on the back correctly?

 

it could already be built into windows, no need to download drivers. Run the Add hardware wizard. During the wizard windows offers to check for drivers on the web, that could help.

Also, is it internal or external? If internal, make sure it is jumpered correctly

 

http://www.imation.com.hk/support/downloads.php

imation has a XP driver

 

imation has a windows 2000 driver I should have said http://www.ntcompatible.com/story742.html

 

ignore the above post, it doesnt work, just go to http://www.imation.com.hk/support/downloads.php

 

also try these:

http://www.driverfiles.net/SCSI-Ada...20-Adapter/download/page,show,626,94,18,.html

http://www.pcdrivers.com/removable.htm (look at 12)

all i can think of mate

 

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions. I have tried the IMation in the past with no luck, I will try the Panasonic and Matsushita drivers. Somehow, I think the drivers "know" who made the drive. :-(

Thanks Again

Bob Schoner

 

if the drive you have is external, I have read somewhere that removing the external casing reveals a standard ide drive. If so, you could possibly connect it to an ide cable like your hard drive and cdrom drives are, making sure the jumper settings are correct.

However, I can't confirm this and would only use it as a last resort as you could possibly damage the drive.

 

After checking google i only found drivers for windows 95/98 they might work on xp so here is a link to one of the siteshttp://members.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=20494

 

Don't ever, ever, ever! try to use a 95/98/ME driver in XP.

You can, and usually will, hose the OS.

 

I could not resist!

Hi,

I couldn't resist so I took it apart. It is a Matsushita drive and the number matches a number on the Panasonic site; there is an NT driver and it says that XP should support it (but it doesn't as a parallel drive). So, the IDE idea intrigues me. Inside it has an IDE connector (not a floppy connector) to a circuit board that connects to the parallel input. But, the power input connector is a floppy type connector. So, I'm wondering, can I connect it to the IDE PC connector and the power to the PC floppy connector? Should I connect it to the hard drive cable or the DVD/CD cable? My inclination is the CD/DVD cable. Also, it has 4 jumper positions (the 4th on the right out of 4 is connected) but no indication as to what does what.

I'm not too worried about damaging the drive since I replaced it with a ZIP drive a few years ago. Just interested in getting it to work; maybe sell it but won't get much for it; the disks are worth more than the drive.

My biggest fear is messing up the PC by connecting the drive.

Bob Schoner

 

The PC floppy connector has 4 wires. 2 black grounds, one 5V red wire and 1 12V yellow wire. If you have a multimeter you can check if the voltages on the floppy connector in the superdrive casing match those of the pc floppy power connector. Also make sure the wires are in the same orientation.
This site may help http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/sup/partsDrive-c.html
http://www.pcguide.com/byop/byop_PowertoFloppyDrive.htm
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31105&seqNum=5&rl=1

Look at the last one especially fig 3.13

As for the ide cable, best to put it on the cd/dvd cable. You may need to play with the jumpers at the back until the drive gets detected if there is no labelling on the drive.

As i stated earlier, I have never done this so be careful not to damage your comp.

 

Hi,
Thanks for the info. The LS 120 drive internal power connector has just two wires and the power supply is 5V so I guess it does not need the 12V. Your info is good to know since I don't want 12V going to the LS 120 drive if it's not supposed to have it. I have a multimeter so I'll take some measurements. I'm going to have to think about this a bit since I don't want to mess up the PC for an experiment. My wife would kill me if I lose her E-Mail.
And, if I get it working I don't know what I would do with it. Essentially this converts it to an internal drive and I don't have an open cable. To put it on the DVD/CD cable I have to lose a drive and I don't want to do that. I have a PCI card for an extra IDE hard drive, maybe could use that.

Bob Schoner
Bob Schoner