Multiple floppies in one system?

From: Russ Blakeman <rhb57_at_vol.com>
Date: Wed Feb 27 17:23:40 2002

JDR's own line of parts (forget the name) used to sell an ISA 4 floppy
controller, they still might. Only machine (that I remember) that supported
more than 2 floppies was my Sanyo MBC-555-2, went to 4 but then a hard drive
defaulted to E:. Easy enough to get used to but the fact it had 4 floppies
and with aftermarket DOS could go to 800k 5.25" format, I was able to run a
Fido BBS system locally without a hard drive on it - Hacker's Anonymous out
of UofI Champaign-Urbana, until they gave us an IBM AT with 2 20mb hard
drives in the Theoretical Chemistry lab.

=> -----Original Message-----
=> From: owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org
=> [mailto:owner-classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org]On Behalf Of David C. Jenner
=> Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 2:22 PM
=> To: Classic Computer Mailing List
=> Subject: Multiple floppies in one system?
=>
=>
=> I'm putting together an old 486 system, one of whose main
=> purposes will be to
=> read/write floppies of several formats. Like 5.25" 360K, 720K,
=> 1.2M, RX50, etc.,
=> and 3.5" 720K and 1.44M. I also want to be able to copy RX50s
=> disk to disk on
=> the appropriate drive type.
=>
=> So I figure it'll take 4 drives (or maybe 3 drives where one is
=> a 3.5"/5.25"
=> combo). All of these would be in one enclosure.
=>
=> The question is, how to do this without having to unplug/plug
=> drives every
=> time you want to make a configuration change? It would be nice
=> to just be
=> able to throw a switch or two to re-configure. Not having to
=> get into the
=> enclosure would be nice, too.
=>
=> I've thought of two ways to do it, but I'm not sure they'll
=> work, or if there
=> might not be a better way.
=>
=> 1) Plug all the drives into one control cable and switch on/off the power
=> to the drives to select them.
=> 2) Plug all the drives into one control cable and select the drives by
=> switching a control line on the control cable.
=>
=> Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
=>
=> Thanks,
=> Dave
=> --
=> David C. Jenner
=> djenner_at_earthlink.net
Received on Wed Feb 27 2002 - 17:23:40 GMT