[Coco] So, does anyone know where to get disk drives?

[Mark J. Blair]

On Aug 28, 2013, at 11:11 , Christopher Smith <csmith at wolfram.com> wrote:
> I'm trying to find drives for my CoCo systems, and I'm having tons of trouble doing so.  I'm at the point where I may just try to cannibalize other systems to get working double-density floppies and build my own case, but I'd prefer not to do this unless I absolutely have to.  My ebay experience trying to buy drives for this seems to have ended with UPS losing my shipment after my waiting a month to receive it, so not much luck there.
> 
> Anyway, I thought I'd ask here.  Any idea where I might find a couple of floppy drives in an external case? :)


I've bought a couple of complete single-drive Radio Shack floppy systems for the CoCo off eBay in the last few weeks since I started playing with vintage computers. IIRC, one was an FD-500 and the other was an FD-501. Both worked fine. I also picked up a pair of Tandon SSDD half height drives there; one worked fine and is now installed in one of those systems, while the other one appears to only step the head in one direction. I'll look at it later and see if I can fix it. Hopefully it's just a blown transistor or something in the stepper motor drive circuit.

I also got a pair of DSDD full height floppies in external cases. Both drives work. One case+power supply worked, and the other one made fire as the power switch consumed itself in an electric arc when I turned it on. Cool stuff. I use one of the drives naked on the tabletop with my KryoFlux and the little switching supply it came with.

Then, I just pounced on a pair of Teac FD-55B drives in the last day or two shortly after they were listed. I'll set them aside (when they arrive) while I continue to look for a J&M controller to go with them.

I've seen several other CoCo floppy drives and/or controllers on eBay during that period, too, some of them in original boxes. Single-drive systems seem to be pretty common at the moment, but I haven't seen any double-drive systems. So, I'd say that you may need to pick up a single-drive system and another bare drive to add to it.

Let's see, right now I see a naked controller (missing its case), an FD-502 interface, an FD-502 drive cable, and a complete full-height CoCo drive system in its original box. The latter was found by visual search, not by my saved search for CoCo items; check out item 281157216709. Some sellers don't know what they're selling, so it's often necessary to cast a wide net and wade through the pictures looking for something interesting.

P.S.: If anybody has a spare J&M controller, particularly a JFD-CP, I'm interested!

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/