26 Oct
2006
26 Oct
'06
7:28 p.m.
On 26 Oct 2006 at 14:12, Kelly Leavitt wrote:
YEs, but any correctly-designed disk controller would use open-collector
drivers, which will appear as floating outputs when powered down.
My question is what is the best order to turn
things on.
I've always turned the drive on before powering up the PC, and
turned the drive off after powering off the PC. Does this really
matter? I always make sure there is no disk in the drive before
doing any power cycling.
Given that signals on a floppy interface are active-low, I'm going to
venture that the sequence should be power to the CPU, then power to the drive. This should prevent spurious drive
head-loads, accidental
writes (even if you don't think you'll ever have a disk in the drive)
and other nicieites.
Maybe. I don;t think it makes much difference.
I have an external drive box on my PC/XT, which contains the hard drives
(ST412-interface) and a couple of 3.5" floppies. In order to get the hard
drives up to speed before the machine tries to boot from them, I always
turn the drives on first, then the CPU box. And I have nevr had any
problems doing that.
-tony