27 May
1997
27 May
'97
12:37 a.m.
Due to massive amounts of caffeine & sleep deprivation, Doug Spence said:
...and a BIZARRE
piece of IBM equipment: an external 5-1/4" floppy drive, model 4869.
Actually, if one worked in an IBM shop, they were quite commonplace...
especially when the PS/2's came out. The PS/2's had *no* way to hook an
internal 5.25" floppy (due to size of case... and IBM's wanting to create a
new standard...) so you had to go external if you wanted/needed to share
data with other machines with 5.25" drives.
Now, on the subject of that weirdo IBM 4869 disk
drive... what does this
plug into? The guy I bought it from said it was for an old PC. It has a
37-pin connector on the end of its cable. It's LARGER in two dimensions
than even a Commodore 1541 drive. Its power switch is very high quality.
:) Would this be a 160K drive? I haven't ripped it apart (yet) to see
how many heads the thing has.
The size of the drive is mainly because of the PS & case (the case is
*very* well RFI shielded)... the drive itself is a standard 1/2 height 360K
40TKDSDD 48TPI drive, with a standard 34-pin edge connector. I have one
sitting on my desk at home, modified to use a standard cable (read: hole
cut with dremel tool in top of case to fit cable) so I can use it with
either my PC or with my Tandy CoCo3. *Very* nice drive. Trying to find a
few more, so I can floppyize my CoCo2 and CoCo1.
If you (or anyone) needs more info on this drive, lemme know. But I can
tell you, that just taking it apart is *fun*, if you have 3-4 hours to get
it apart and back together. I've had mine disassembled 3-4 times now, to
figure where to cut holes & stuff for my cable mods.
Enjoy!
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger | If at first you don't succeed,
Programmer, NorthernWay | nuclear warhead disarmament should
zmerch(a)northernway.net | *not* be your first career choice.