Roland Clan Forums

Hello!

I just picked up a couple of these for a good price and I have a few questions for anyone who is familiar with them. First and foremost I know the manual states to only used 2DD floppies but in the MC-50 I'm able to use 2HD without any issues, not even taping the hole on disk. Has anyone had long term issues using 2HD floppies in these?

One strange thing however. When I put disk from MC-50 into the MkII, the MkII didn't seem to like it. Are the formats not compatible?

Lastly, on Ebay they sell floppy drive emulators from China. Has anyone used these or can someone recommend compatible floppy drive emulators that aren't too pricey?

Thanks!

I had great problems with 2HD discs on mine, so I kept a bunch of 720k ones.

It could be the drive heads are out-of-alignment on one or the other of your MCs. The formats are, I am nearly certain, compatible and just the amount of memory were different. The new OS works fine on my old MC-50 mk1, but it uses up more memory.

I looked into floppy-to-thumb drive/SD card converters some years back. They were pricey, I was told they were for industrial applications.

Floppy drives on PCs became increasingly standardized so these may only work on PC-based connectors. Older gear, like my Akai 2800i and Korg DSM-1, had quirky older connectors. The MC may also belong in this category.

Good to know about the discs. I discovered this particular MkII doesn't like the newer Verbatim floppies. I found some old Memorex 1.44's I had packed away that are from the 90s and they worked without any issues (for the time being). One interesting thing though, the drive on the MkII is also louder than the one on my standard MC-50. Not an expert with floppy drives but perhaps this could mean something... bad?

All that said I contacted Gotek and there might actually be a compatible 720k emulator for under $50. I bought one but it will take about a month to get here. Here's hoping!