Using an 8" drive on a PC (WAS RE: "Smartcom II" package available)

Christian, Since I am trying to keep this as simple as possible what drives are "smart enough" that I could use them with vanilla PC HW. My interest is in DD 8" disks so not having SS capability is not an issue (at least at this point). Also I wish to image a complete disk and write a complete disk as the disk would be used on the original system. Looking at Dave Dunfield's site he is using a Qume 242 which he is wiring directly (using an adapter) to a PC. So I would assume that would be smart enough except the only 242 I found on a quick search is listed for $340 on eBay. So that is not happening. -Ali -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Christian Corti Sent: Sunday, September 21, 2014 2:46 AM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Using an 8" drive on a PC (WAS RE: "Smartcom II" package available) On Sat, 20 Sep 2014, Ali wrote: Forget it, that won't work: 1. You would need additional circuitry to control the drive. As an example, the IBM disk drive needs the four stepper motor phases for head movement whereas the Shugart interface only provides a step pulse and direction signal. The IBM drive are much "dumber" than Shugart drives. 2. To read IBM floppies with a PC you ultimatively need a controller that supports FM and MFM. Along with that you need either a tool that understand the IBM disk structure or something like ImageDisk if you only want to image the floppies. Christian