Attn. owners of Tajima TMEX, TMFX, TEHX, TFHX, TME-DC, TMFD, discontinued
Floppy Disk Drives. This effects all Tajima machines including Chenille
Machines that have built in Disk Drives

This does NOT affect the NEO Machine or any of the newer TFMX TEMX type
machine.

I just want let everybody know that the Manufacturer of the Floppy Disk
Drive (YE Data) used in the above listed Tajima Machines has ceased production
of the Drives. Phase out production orders were taken for the last batch
this past summer. It is unknown how many drives Tajima ordered to fulfill
future replacement parts orders. Since this is a non standard over the counter
Disk Drive. Machine owners will need to look at other forms of devices to
transfer designs into your Machines. I figured sales of direct Connect Cables,
External devices or USB type replacement drives will increase now that this
is happening.

Hirsch International still has stock of these drives Part # 64330005000 or
PB001000RE00 along with some of the third party companies. Hirsch present
price is $175.10 each. Who knows if this will change as the stock depletes.

If you have a Disk Drive in your machine that measures 4” wide by 1” tall
and the light on the face plate is green when its reading this is your drive.

If you have a drive that measures 4” wide and ¾ “tall and the light on the
face plate is red when its reading. You made need to have you controller
panel updated. A modification of your CPU board and a special wire harness
will need to be installed in order to except the above Disk Drive. But this is
only if you want to still read floppy disks.

If you have lots of floppy disk still around I would be looking very hard
at least having a spare drive on hand until such a time you can make this
transition to other forms of devices.

If anybody is interested, Scott Marchall has a limited amount of these drives brand new
in stock. They come with instruction on how to set the correct pins for
your type of machines. He will sell them for $160.00 each, plus shipping, via
PayPal or Credit Card. Just email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .


More info about Discontinued Floppy Disk Drives for Tajima Machines

You are correct about the USB sticks. The USB stick will only hold the
same amount of information that the disk would hold. 720 K if you have a 2DD
720K floppy drive, and 144 MB if you have the 2HD floppy.

There are a couple of manufactures that have external devices that can read
folders and the files in them. but there are drawbacks.

Some major overlooked issue about the USB devices are

1 If you hook up an external USB device via the serial port or
parallel ports underneath the control panel. (THIS IS BIGGIE) You lose the Trace
function of the machine, and the lose the ability to have the name or G001 #
of the design that's transferred to the machine, The design just shows as
M-1 thur M-99 on the machines display.

2 With the built in USB emulators that replace the Disk Drives. I have
had very little luck with loading the machines system software from a USB
stick. It's kind of like a computers BIOS. When you load the system software
in you machine the CPU board sends a command to the disk drive to start the
motor turning and transfer the file of information from the disk to the
machines CPU. The FDD Emulator not having a motor. will cause an error on the
machines display. I not totally sure why this happens and have found some
emulators work with certain CPU board and so don't. I have tracked the part
numbers of Tajima's CPU's boards and have found certain ones seem to work
better than others. The newer part numbers have a better track record.

Why is this important. Any time you change any board in a Tajima machine
it is recommended or sometimes required that the software be reloaded to make
sure the machine works correctly. Sometimes the software is changed for
better performance of updated features.

If you are going to switch over to the USB emulators I would do this before
your present disk drive fails. That way you at least have the disk drive in
case you need to reload the system software.