I've recently purchased a brand new Sony FDC, the HBK-30 and I'm not sure about how it works, is it compatible with any FDD or only with his own Sony drive, the HBD-30X/W?

AFAIK the HBK-30 is just an interface for a 3.5" DS DD 720kB disk drive. If you have a drive with the same cable, it probably works...








OK, useless reply

Long time ago I had two Sony HBD-30W external FDDs connected to my MSX1.
HBK-30 is used to connect a drive to the computer.
With HBK-35 you can connect one HBD-30W drive to another HBD-30W unit or a HBD-30W to a Sony HB-F500/HB-F700 MSX2 computer (in this last case then you have two drives: one internal and one external).

Useless reply too; I don't know if the connector of the HBK-30 lead can be plugged into other [non-Sony] drives.

So, nobody uses this FDC with drives from other brands?

I have the HB-50, and the disk drive was faulty. I changed it for a PC one and made some changes to the cable connector, and it worked fine. This was a looooong time ago.

The sony HBK-30 is an interface that you can you for external diskdrives, single sided and double sided. There is a switch on it for changing single and double sided. You can use for example the Sony HBD-30W, The philips VY 0011, home-made external drives.
The HBD-50 does not work with this interface, because a part of the electronics is in the interface and the other part is in the drive-case.

Thanks!, so it seems that's a standard floppy interface after all! . And yes, it has a switch to select if the drive plugged is single or double sided.