6 Feb
2009
6 Feb
'09
1:11 p.m.
Thanks for the floppy cable pinout. I now have a spare floppy cable I
can cannibalize if necessary.
However, I now have thought of another way around this problem. In
addition to the 520ST that I have that needs a floppy drive, I also
have a Mega4 ST that is missing its keyboard and mouse. I see that the
keyboard connector is just a 6 pin RJ12 style connector that probably
just carries serial data. What would be required to make a cable to
connect a serial port on a PC to this connector in order to use
something like Hyperterminal to act as the keyboard for the Mega ST?
Is this simply a matter of making a cable and setting the baud rate
right or would there be more to it than that? I'm assuming that
something other than just ASCII is sent over the wire since somehow
the mouse movements are carried on the same cable as the keyboard key
press events.
Thanks!
David
On Jan 30, 2009, at 1:02 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 30 Jan 2009 at 12:39, David Betz wrote:
Sure, that would help! I figured there was some
other electronics in
the drive like the Atari 800 and C64 drives. If it's just building a
cable, I can probably handle that.
Yup, that's all it is. The connector's a 14-pin DIN, which is
perhaps the hardest thing to find, but I may have one somewhere.
The pinout is as follows:
1 - Read data
2 - Side select
3 - Gnd
4 - Index
5 - Drive 0 select
6 - Drive 1 select
7 - Gnd
8 - Motor on
9 - Step direction
10 - Step
11 - Write data
12 - Write gate
13 - Track 0
14 - Write protect
You'll need a small power supply for the 3.5" drive, but a 5 volt
"wall wart" should do--and you can tuck two drives in the same box if
the mood strikes you. If you use a PC-type 1.44MB drive, make sure
that your disks don't have the high-density aperture uncovered (you
don't want the drive thinking that they're 1.44s).
Cheers,
Chuck