[Coco] 720k 3.5" floppies

[Chester Patterson]

Drat! And here I've been paying freight for heavy 1400's all the way to
Costa Rica just to get the silly drives. Good grief. Ah well, at least I got
the RAM out of them as well.

So it appears that the media is the key, not so much the drives. Thank
goodness I picked up 7 sealed new boxes of 720k media some months ago.

I made a drive cable with a drive select jumper so that I have three drives,
set to 0/0/1 but the second drive 0 and drive 1 look like drive 1 and 2 to
the controller. Same cable feeds +5VDC to pins 1.3.5.7 and they work OK.
Sounds like the HX and 1400 drives are the same.

Thanks for the input. I'll stop throwing money away!


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If you modify the floppy cable to not connect to the power pins, you can use
the one from a Tandy 1000HX.
Stephen
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I am using a Mitsumi 1.44MB 3.5" drive for my coco mounted and cabled along
with my 5.25" drive in my FD-502.  As long as the 1.44MB HD drive has
jumpers for drive select settings you should be able to use them just fine.
I have been using my drive set up for months now without any problem.
Derek
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Yep, I have a pair of Sony 1.44s that I use with the CoCo/Dragon and can
comfirm that they work without problems, even if the drives don't have
jumpers you can use them with the correct cable.
Phill.
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I had problems with the few 720k drives I had.  I have very few problems
with 1.44M drives with 720k media.  I have not had good luck with 1.44M
media at 720k however.
Bruce W