On 10/20/2005 at 4:14 PM Michael B. Brutman wrote:
With all of those pins on the interface, why
wouldn't the motors be
independently controlled? That seems like a waste on any system, never
mind the wear and tear on the drives & inserted floppies.
But there really aren't any unused pins. Remember that all of the
odd-numbered pins are grounded, so that leaves only 16 for signals. Pin 2
was originally reserved for "reduced write current" signalling (or
"density
select'). Pin 4 was for "Head load" and was a spare only on some drives
that didn't have that feature and pin 34 was used for disk change/ready.
There really aren't any spares.
Besides, with a "head load" facility, who needed to control the motors
individually? But the PC didn't use a drive with a head load facility...
Cheers,
Chuck