[Coco] Regarding disk drives

[John Eric]

I wasn't too clear at the end of this. What I was meaning is if I jumper two drives as drive 1 and connect them to the IBM cables drive a and drive b connectors, that should give me drive 0 and 1 on coco and if I jumper a 3rd drive as drive 2 and connect it to the connector intended for a tape drive, that should work as coco drive 2. I'm going to go ahead and order the idc crimp tool as I realize it will have many uses, such as making a CM-8 extender cable, etc.

jeric


________________________________
From: John Eric <jet.pack at ymail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Friday, January 2, 2009 11:53:14 PM
Subject: [Coco] Regarding disk drives

I decided to upgrade two of my CoCo's floppy diskette drives to DSDD 360K units.
After installing drives 0 and one, setting the appropriate jumpers and making sure only the second drive had the terminator resistor pack, I was ready to go... or so I thought.

One of the units, both drives worked fine, as DSDD.
The other unit, one of the drives couldn't read squat.

Although both appeared to be Tandy's cabling, apparently one of the cables differed. A quick look - Tandy's nonsense of pulling pins to select the drive. I had forgotten about that. Looking at the original drives, drive 0 had both the 0 and 1 select jumpers soldered right in, and the second drive had only the drive 1 jumper. In fact, all of my Tandy drives were like this.

Simple solution, crimp new connectors on a cable. However, I just had a thought. If I were to use IBM type floppy cables and jumper both drives as drive 1, that should work, right? I ask because I have a box full of 3M IBM type floppy + Tape drive cables - they have the standard 4 connectors at the end - 3.5" and 5,25" for Drive A (IBMspeak) and the same for drive B, separated by about 6" of cable, and then about 6" later, another 5.25" type connector intended for a tape drive. So, my thinking is, if I jumper two drives as drive 1, the end connectors will access them as drive 0 and 1 (because of the twist in the cable), and if I jumper a third drive as drive 2, the third connector should acces it as the third CoCo drive. So, before I order the IDC cable crimper and some connectors (the end that hooks to the FDC will have to be replaced with a CoCo type connector) - does this sound right?

Thanks - JEric



      

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