[Coco] Model 100 Drives....

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that John R. Hogerhuis may have mentioned these words:

>On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 05:35 +0000, Dave wrote:
> >
> > Neil, I was thinking along the lines of 720K drives installed and
> > the cases are already "Tandy's"....they look good...
> > I would have to find one and take it apart first....power, etc...
> > And find a case of 720's if it was feasible... ;-)
> > Cheers Dave
> > (and I'm sure some 100 and 102 owners would be upset at this idea)

Count me in -- for someone who would be upset. Working drives are getting 
durned tough to find, and more expensive to replace! (Yes, mine is no 
longer functioning as well... :-( )

You'd be better off to gut a USB->floppy drive (some actually use *real* 
floppy controllers) and start from there; the Model 100 drives are very 
proprietary - Single sided, Single Density, FM encoding (not MFM) 2 SPT, 40 
(TPDD1) or 80 (TPDD2) tracks; with a storage of 100K or 200K respectively. 
The DOS is in the ROM, it's pretty easy to write a DOS in just about 
anything (basic, Python, Forth, etc.) as the command structure is pretty 
simple.

For some of us, seeing that is akin to asking on a Classic Mac list how to 
gut an original Macintosh to turn it into an aquarium...

>Well if you're going to gut them, you might ask Rick Hanson at
>Club100.org . I recollect him saying something about a great pile of
>broken TPDD drives.

I had forgotten that - I should see what he's got layin' around, as I 
believe it's a mechanical failure (disk carriage linkage is bent) on my 
drive - it was working fine the last time I used it, but now...

>Better than wasting working ones. Anyway the going rate for working
>units is $80-$100 a pop, and when the knitting machine folks realize the
>TPDD-1 is the same as the Brother FB-100 they are only going to get more
>expensive ($200-$300). It's already starting to happen...

Yup, that's for sure!

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger  --  SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch at 30below.com

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