21 Oct
2006
21 Oct
'06
1:31 p.m.
I'm thinking that the "box built from junk PC
bits" needs more investigation
(would make it easy to provide Ethernet support!). It depends what people
want, though - do they want a box to do data recovery from various floppy
media (which means a selection of drive types plugged in at once), or do they
want a backpack-like single drive solution (which implies they want something
compact, and the bulk of a scrap PC motherboard + PSU is too big)?
So, NOBODY remembers that these devices WERE commercially available??
In ~1987, there was an aftermarket "external drive for reading PC and CP/M
diskettes" being sold for the Macintosh. EXACTLY what we're talking
about. It was a full height 5.25" case, with a 1/2 height 360K drive.
The remainder of the case held an Ampro Little Board. And nothing else.
There was a floppy used to "start-up" the "drive", along with software
on
the Mac. The software on the Mac was, of course, a simple terminal
program.
OB_ reminesce: there two two formats misspelled in their format list.
Both were ones that had previously been misspelled (and later corrected)
on the XenoCopy format list.
I have an Ampro Little Board, but it is in an Ampro case, not disguised as
an "external drive for reading diskettes", and I promised it to somebody
(if/when I dig it out, and remember who I promised it to)
The Quark Megatel (80186?), (or OQO!), might be a better choice for the
guts of the device, due to software availability.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com