BleepingComputer.com: Canon StarWriter 30

I have an old Canon word processor Canon StarWritet 30 Personal Publishing System) That I recently decided to put back in operation. the unit works fine including booting of the Special Headings 3.5 inch 2DD disk. However, I can not get the unit to initialize a 3.5 inch MF-2HD disk. In reading the manual it indicates that only 3.5 inch 2DD disks can be initialized. Two questions. Is there any way around this whereby I could use the more available 3.5 inch MF-2HD disks? If not where can I get a few 3.5 inch 2DD disks to see if the unit will operate on them (initialize, save and retrive)?

Hello and welcome to the forum!

Boy, let me get into the wayback machine and lets see what we can do!

Finding low density floppies is going to be hard as they havent made them in man years.
Do you have a system that has a floppy drive on it?
If so, what version of Windows is it running?
98 will let you format a high dens floppy to low dens by right clicking on the drive & selecting format then change the size but XP wont. (I just checked)

If you have an XP system start a command prompt
Start - run - cmd & hit enter
From there try

format a: /f:720
or
format a: /t:80 /n:9

either should reformat the disk to low dens for you.

Hope it works!!

I think you'll need to track down some genuine DD disks in order to try to get that system functional. The main problem with trying a re-formatted HD disk is the write bias is higher for the HD disk, so the Canon may read the disk but get write errors when you try to save onto it, or it mightn't hold and the data will read OK immediately after the write, but as time passes start to throw CRC errors.

I just found this web site and was looking for some ribbons for my old star writer 30. Was in the process of cleaning and actually have an unopened box of 2DD diskettes id anyone wants them.

Hi. I just joined today. I have a ton of these ribbons. I just bid on the cord to my own starwriter in order to get my old poetry from college off of mine. LMK if you want some of the ribbons. AuntMurr.