[Coco] FD-50x question

[farna at att.net]

Tandy yanked the pieces from the drive cable to make drive selection idiot proof. Sounds like that's a Tandy drive -- maybe they did the same on some of their AT compatibles? IBM set both drives to drive 0 then used a twist in the cable for the same reason. IBMs and clones were never intended to use more than two floppy drives. Other than the CoCo, I don't know of any computers that did. You could use more than two with a Commodore, but their serial drives were so slow I don't think it would have been worth the effort. 

--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html
(free download available!)

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Brian Blake <random_rodder at yahoo.com>
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Sent: Saturday, August 12, 2006 7:32:47 PM
> Subject: [Coco] FD-50x question
> 
> 
> Was playing with a TEAC FD-5gfr 1.2 MB today. This drive works well, as long as 
> I'm not trying to read disks from other drives or read it's disks in other 
> drives. No real surprise here...
>    
>   I did notice that the original drive for my FD-501 has jumpers on the DS0 & 
> DS1 spots. They are soldered in place and drive 0 & 1 show the same directories, 
> etc...
>   I was able to use the TEAC as DS2 and even backed up Flightsim II (backup 0 to 
> 2).
>    
>   My question is (and I thin kI know the answer..) do I have to desolder the 
> jumper from DS1 on the FD-501 drive to use it as 0 and the teac as 1?
>    
>   Thanks,
>   Brian
> ---------------------------------
> 
> Yes, either cut or desolder the extra jumper. Or take a trick from Tandy and 
> yank the DS1 pin from that drive's connector (I'm joking about this, but it 
> would actually work.)
>  
> Bob
> 
>