26 Jul
1998
26 Jul
'98
1:39 p.m.
First of all, I believe it could be untwisted by pulling off the
back cover of the connector and pulling the cable off. Also, I
believe the IBM controllers walk fine with jumper-selected drives,
just that everyone uses the half twist thing.
I've been tinkering with my Kaypro to try to
eliminate the errors that
drive B
has been giving me. Putting in a new floppy drive
didn't seem to fix
them;
I wonder if it's the cable? (As is, the Kaypro
supports two drives
(SA400 or
equivalent). The original owner bought a little
hardware thingie that
does
something to the drive-select signals to add support
for four drives;
he also
added a connector to the cable for drive C between
A's and B's
connectors.
I currently have no drive C, and only drive B is giving
me problems --
that's
why I suspect the cable.)
So I bought a new cable. It has that stupid half-twist, so I'm
wondering how
to coax my system into working with the new cable. I
think I
understand the
situation from the point of view of the drives (both
drives are
jumpered as
#1, and some pins are exchanged: 10 <-> 16, 11
<-> 15, 12 <-> 14).
But doesn't the computer have to cooperate in this farce? That is,
would I
have to reprogram my BIOS to mess things up in the same
way as the IBM
PC's
hardware, so that the drive cable can do its part and
thus it all ends
up
(sort of) working?
It's worth trying the new cable (though it seems rather cheap, and
there's
a
break in the insulation, though that could be because I
dropped it on a
concrete floor at the store). But if it's too much trouble, I'll skip
it.
Incidentally: God damn IBM for cutting corners this way, and making
people
think shenanigans like this are totally normal and to
be expected, and
messing
with a perfectly reasonable interface.
-- Derek
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