This weekend's haul

From: Doug Spence <ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca>
Date: Fri May 30 06:59:00 1997

On Tue, 27 May 1997, Roger Merchberger wrote:

> Due to massive amounts of caffeine & sleep deprivation, Doug Spence said:
>
> >...and a BIZARRE
> >piece of IBM equipment: an external 5-1/4" floppy drive, model 4869.
>
> Actually, if one worked in an IBM shop, they were quite commonplace...
> especially when the PS/2's came out. The PS/2's had *no* way to hook an
> internal 5.25" floppy (due to size of case... and IBM's wanting to create a
> new standard...) so you had to go external if you wanted/needed to share
> data with other machines with 5.25" drives.

Does the PS/2 not have any 5.25" drive bays? Weird. :) I'm not an IBMer
so I don't know these things, though I *think* one of the machines I used
to do CAD work on was a PS/2 of some flavour.

> The size of the drive is mainly because of the PS & case (the case is
> *very* well RFI shielded)... the drive itself is a standard 1/2 height 360K
> 40TKDSDD 48TPI drive, with a standard 34-pin edge connector.

OK, that makes it useful. Would you happen to know what the pinout is of
the 37-pin connector, so that I can try to make use of the drive without
modification? Is it even possible to buy a matching female 37-pin
connector?

I want to connect this drive to my A1060 SideCar on my Amiga 1000. I
removed the internal floppy drive in the SideCar in order to install a
5.25" hard drive in its bay. If I build an extension cable, I should be
able to get this IBM drive hooked up instead, so that I'll actually have
an A: drive on the machine. :)

Then I'll have a machine I can run 22DISK on so I can avoid a lot of the
foolishness with serial cables, etc.

> I have one
> sitting on my desk at home, modified to use a standard cable (read: hole
> cut with dremel tool in top of case to fit cable) so I can use it with
> either my PC or with my Tandy CoCo3. *Very* nice drive. Trying to find a
> few more, so I can floppyize my CoCo2 and CoCo1.

Interesting. How are the drives interfaced to the CoCos? I've got a
CoCo1, CoCo2, and CoCo3, but I've never found a disk drive for these
machines.

> If you (or anyone) needs more info on this drive, lemme know. But I can
> tell you, that just taking it apart is *fun*, if you have 3-4 hours to get
> it apart and back together. I've had mine disassembled 3-4 times now, to
> figure where to cut holes & stuff for my cable mods.

Heh. I couldn't even get mine apart, because of the two six-pointed
screws on the bottom. The screws have a lump in the middle so I can't use
a flat-blade screwdriver as I did when I had a similar problem opening my
Mac 512K.

> Enjoy!
> Roger "Merch" Merchberger
> --
> Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
> Programmer, NorthernWay | nuclear warhead disarmament should
> zmerch_at_northernway.net | *not* be your first career choice.

Doug Spence
ds_spenc_at_alcor.concordia.ca
Received on Fri May 30 1997 - 06:59:00 BST