[Coco] floppy drive question - only a little OT

[Robert Hermanek]

I guess what confuses me is that the drive that is in there looks like a 
totally standard 3.5" floppy drive -- it even has the 4 pin connector 
for power, it is simply left unconnected.  Still, sounds like Tandy 
pulled a fast one on me and made sure that if I put in a standard drive 
for B: I'm going to get a small flash of light and a bad smell.  Back to 
the drawing board.

-Robert

On 7/18/2013 8:47 PM, Bruce W. Calkins wrote:
> ----- 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.
>
>
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