14 Feb
2002
14 Feb
'02
5:31 a.m.
On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
On Thu, 14 Feb 2002, Sellam Ismail wrote:
Drive Select.
Add a switch to disconnect 10, 12, and 14. (DS0, DS1, DS2)
Then you can leave the power on to the drive, but it will not be selected,
and won't interfere with the others.
Run all other signals through to all drives, but run the drive select
lines through a switch to control which drive you want. Leave 14
disconnected (most drives and software expect the drive to be #0 or #1),
and get a 2P50T rotary switch?
That would work well if all the tape drives that use the floppy interface
followed the rules, but not all do. I guess it would be possible to build
a board with some logic chips that could isolate individual drives from
the bus, but I think it would be much easier for now to only connect one
drive at a time.
-Toth
If you connect more than one tape drive to the
floppy interface, they will
conflict with each other. Even if you disconnect their power connector,
but leave the data cable connected, you will have "weird" problems.
Why?
Hmm, after thinking about this a little bit I can see that there might be
a conflict. But I would still like a technical answer to my "why"
question :)