14 Sep
1998
14 Sep
'98
9:43 a.m.
The other week I bought an IBM 4869 5.25" floppy drive. This is an
external
unit that hooks up to a PC via a 37-way D connector.
The case is massive,
for a
simple floppy drive.
The extra space (length) is the power supply. I also have one of those
drives.
Anyway, I can't get it to work properly. It is
probably a 360K drive
mechanism,
and my PC (Philips 386SX AT clone) boots normally with
this type of drive
set
in the backup RAM.
It was made to work with the XT, plugging into a special port on the disk
controller card. Yes, it is a standard 360K drive.
I can format disks and use DIR, but reading or writing any files always
gives
an Abort/Retry/Cancel error. Unsurprisingly, cleaning
the heads made no
difference. Actually, to elaborate on this copying a load of files to a
newly-
formatted disk gives an error after copying (say) the
first two files.
Does this drive have some non-standard pinout, different from the 37-way
D
5.25" port on the back of the PC, or maybe only
work with IBM PS/2
machines?
If it is just faulty, what might the problem be? The
cable is unlikely I
think,
> as is the power supply.
they are so that I can buy a suitable screwdriver bit.
Tamperproof screw solution: a SHARP 1/2" drill bit. Just drill off the
heads, and you'll have no problem.
The drive that I had, I had no use for, and couldn't get it to work with my
PC, so here's what I did:
-Pulled the old 360K drive, and replaced it with a 1.2 meg drive.
-Cut a hole in the top of the case large enough so that I could attach a
3.5" drive on top of the 5.25".
-Super-glued the 3.5" to the 5.25" drive.
-Split the power cable, and put a 3.5" floppy connector on it so that the
P/S could power both drives.
-Using a TRS-80 printer cable (ribbon - type), I twisted the cable and put
on new plugs to connect the floppies.
-Ran the ribbon cable under the P/S, and out a slot that I cut in the back.
-Connected all cables, and put the case back together.
-Ran ribbon cable into open slot on back of computer and connected to
floppy connector.
It may seem like a bit of work to get an external drive, but it sure beats
buying a new $80 tower case.
--
-Jason
(roblwill(a)usaor.net)
ICQ#-1730318