Floppy drive for Zenith 100

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Thu Feb 20 07:38:00 2003

  Oh. I thought he just wanted to know if anyone knew if a 3.5" drive would work in a Z-100. He didn't come out and ask if the drive would work.

  Anyway, yes, a 3.5" drive can be used in the Z-100. You can connect it and tell the Z-100 that it's an 8" drive and it will use 77 tracks of the 3.5" disk and format it like an 8" drive but that will give you a non-standard disk format and the disk that couldn't be written/read on another computer. OR you can just connect the 3.5" drive and let the Z-100 think that it's a 40 track 5.25" drive but that won't gain anything but a non-standard disk format. OR there is supposed to be a way to use 80 track 5.25" drives on the Z-100. I don't remember what was involved but if you can find out, you could put in that mod with the 3.5" drives and double your disk capacity but you'd still have a non-standard disk format. OR you can get a copy of MS-DOS 4.00 and patch it to run on the Z-100. DOS 4.00 supports 3.5" drives. There was (is?) a website that had the patches but I don't have the URL for it here. Perhaps Rich Beaudry <r_beaudry_at_hotmail.com> still has it. I remember that it was located in such a way that a sear
ch wouldn't find it so someone will have to give you the URL. The guy that had the website was a real whiz on the Z-100s and he had done a lot of interesting patches/mods for the Z-100s including writing SCSI drivers and designing and building SCSI interfaces for them. All in all, the last option would be the best. It would give you a lot more disk capacity and the disks would be a standard format and could be interchanged with a standard PC.

   Joe


At 07:50 PM 2/19/03 -0500, Glen wrote:
>Aw, come on, Joe! Enlighten the guy!
>
>(I know too)
>
>Glen
>0/0
>
>> At 09:57 AM 2/19/03 -0500, you wrote:
>> >Hello,
>> >
>> > Do you know if it is possible to install a 1.44MB floppy drive in a Zenith
>> >100?
>> >
>> > Thank you.
>> >
>> > Ken.
>> >
>>
>> Yes I know.
>>
>> Joe
Received on Thu Feb 20 2003 - 07:38:00 GMT