[Coco] floppy drive question - only a little OT

[Bruce W. Calkins]

 ----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Robert Hermanek"

> Since my recent success with 3.5" on my coco3 (thank you everyone) I 
> decided to open up my Tandy 1000 HX and see what kind of floppy it has.  I 
> know it is a standard 720k floppy in terms of software, but when I looked 
> in the case I've got this:  what appears to be a perfectly normal floppy 
> drive, with 34 pin cable attached, and no power cable on the 4 pin power 
> connector.  Floppy works fine of course -- is it an option I was unaware 
> of for floppy drives to receive power via the 34 pin ribbon cable itself? 
> I was going to stick a second drive in there, but there is no 4 pin power 
> cable available...
>
> Just a little mystery.
>
> -RobertH
>
>

======================

I had and converted one of those!  The power was routed through some of the 
"unused" ground lines.  As I remember only half of the 34 lines are used to 
control and move data in the standard floppy drive and the rest are normally 
grounded.  The Tandy 1000s used some of those "ground" lines.  You need to 
cut a trace and solder on some leads for +12 and +5 volts.  The drive its 
self did not last long though and I soon moved to normal 3.5" 1.44M drives 
using 720k media.

Bruce W.