[Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on MaltedMedia FTP

[Chad H]

I resemble that...which is why I have electronics all over the place and parts from digikey nd tayda O don't even remember what I ordered them for.  Time to re-inventory everthing :/   Expensive hobby this can be...tinkering with and inventing with electronics.

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Zippster
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 6:48 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on MaltedMedia FTP

Don’t get me wrong. I like floppies too.  :)

I have tons of them for Apple II’s Commodores, pcs, etc, etc….

Then again I’m cursed with an affinity for just about any piece of tech, a terrible affliction, really…. lol

- Ed


> On Feb 8, 2015, at 5:48 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> True but floppies are embedded into my CoCo experience now and still serve my storage needs well.  Some people  talk about their unreliable nature but in my experience the only unreliable disks seemed to be those 3.5" disks that were in abundance right towards the final few years before they all started disappearing from the shelves.  Its like the quality went down.  I remember there used to be "limetime warranty" printed on the boxes before this.  Now as for my CoCo 5 1/4" disks, not a sing one has gone bad since I started rebuilding my collection in 2002.  I have a single 10-disk box of "primaries" that get used almost all of the time, in fact the only time I use others is when I have on rare occasion pulled out the tandy authentic masters to make a copy.
> (Hurrys up to desk to knock)
> 
> Sent from my Galaxy S4
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Zippster <zippster278 at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 8, 2015 04:42 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on 
> MaltedMedia FTP
> 
> They wouldn’t be difficult to reproduce, but you’re probably right 
> that there wouldn’t be the interest to support a production run.  Floppy disks will be an interesting relic one day, if they aren’t already.
> I’ll bet there’s a lot of younger people that have never even handled 
> one in “real life” and only know them from pictures…
> 
> The enig finish looks good when new, but you really want hard-plated 
> gold contacts for edge connectors if you can get them (holds up much 
> better)
> 
> - Ed
> 
> 
>> On Feb 8, 2015, at 4:03 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I gues with it being a deviation away from the standard controllers it would not be the best choice for trying to reproduce floppy controllers based around this chip.  I have been off and on investigating if such controllers could be reproduced for a reasonable cost.  I know I can get the WD1773 chips but they are a bit costly.  The MD8877A chips like was used in some of the FD-500 controllers is cheap.  I also found scans of what appears to be Tandy's own schematics for some controllers but they appear to be hand-written and somewhat difficult to make out.  Also, not every component is clearly identified.
>> 
>> I now have a total of 3 Floppy controllers, 2 FD-502s and 1 FD-500. I'm good with this for now but with them seemingly becoming more scarce and most of them with the non-gold contacts suffering from increased oxidation I thought it would be nice to reproduce some with the nice gold ENIG contact finish we have been seeing on some of these new projects.  We could even take the opportunity to upgrade the EPROM IC to support up to 27512's or maybe even something like the 256K EEPROM I'm working on that may be programmable from the CoCo itself.
>> 
>> Of course, I have no idea how much interest there would be out there in this sort of thing as a lot of people seem to have abandoned floppies altogether.  If I invested the time and money trying to cobble up some prototypes it's very possible it may just be a one on one off deal.
>> 
>> - Chad
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Darren 
>> A
>> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 3:46 PM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on 
>> MaltedMedia FTP
>> 
>> On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> From comparing the board view, yep that's definitely the same board.
>>> Was a version of Disk Basic ever made?  I'm guessing NitrOS9 
>>> compatibility is out of the question.
>>> 
> 
> 
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