24 Dec
2006
24 Dec
'06
5 p.m.
Sellam Ismail <sellam at vintagetech.com> wrote:
I've got the weirdest disk drive ever.
It's a standard 5.25" mounted inside a factory made metal enclosure. It
has a fixed power cord coming out the back with a power switch. Inside is
a simple power supply (transformer and a couple regulators and capacitors)
that puts out +5V and +12V. There's a power connector going into the disk
drive power socket.
Here's the weird part: there is no data cable. There is no port or
connector or anything on the enclosure for a data cable. There's not even
a cut-out for a data cable.
It's basically just a disk drive that powers up and spins if you put a
disk in it. I initially thoughtt that it must be a degausser or
something, but there's nothing inside that would indicate any such
operation.
OK, I admit it. I'm stumped.
No markings on the enclosure anywhere.
Any ideas?
What you describe sounds very normal for a "generic" floppy drive
cabinet from the S-100 days.
Well, most of the folks I worked with made theirs out of plywood
and 2x4's, but for those who wanted to buy something metal and
already made there were generic metal cabinets with holes in the
right places.
It was always nice if there was a slot for the ribbon cable, but
many ribbon cables were regularly abused by slamming a cable on top
of them :-)
Find a late 70's BYTE and look in the ads in the back.
Pinning down the exact era would be easier if you told us
the exact floppy drive (e.g. "SA-400"). Date codes on the semiconductors
in the power supply might also pin down the era.
It is likely that somebody here might recognize the drive jumpering!
A drive could indeed be hotwired to always have the write
gate always on, but you'd need something else (possibly a small
daughterboard with a few TTL chips and/or timers) to get them to
go to cylinder 0 and then step over the surface and act as an eraser.
Tim.