Date   : Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:22:16 +0100
From   : fragula@... (Fragula)
Subject: 3.5' Drives (Again..)

Hi Peter!

If i remember right, Amiga drives were a "bit" funny, and did not work
well on anything other than Amigas..  Something to do with (a) being
wired/jumpered in a strange way and/or (b) doing some sort of
passthrough of the data R/W signals to accommodate an odd (GCRNRZ?)
encoding method. I could be wrong on this.. Long time, only 3 Amigas in
the attic and AFAIC they can stay there and rot.

Actually they didn't work that great on Amigas either. :-/ Horrid fussy
things.

However  Most "normal" 3.5" /double density/ drives should, with
appropriate jumpering, be useable with a B/Master. High Density drives
/may/ work with appropriate twiddling, but things may be less than optimal.

We (ehem.. ) should actually figure out the PC 1.44M HD drive And Disk
think onto beebs. I'm too lazy though. Preoccupied with crappy
mailservers and how to make a two 2TB RAID fileservers out of  150 quid,
fairly liquid bottles, and some sticky backed plastic.

The wires /should not/ be twisted. Never. Not Ever.  Except on PCs. It's
a Very Bad Thing. PCs are so bad that it doesn't matter.

On Proper Computers (i.e. not PCs) The drive select jumpers should be
used.. Twisted cables were invented solely so that a Certain Personal
Computer Manufacturing Company's somewhat less than intelligent (i.e.
barely sentient) "engineers" could swap drives without the ability to
think and twiddle jumpers for drive select 0/1/2 etc. (aside to all "oh
yes there were. I've had /four/ working.") in between sessions of
sucking the idiot-drool from their blue ties and choking on 360K MS-Dos
floppies.

You are of course quite right.

There does appear to be variety of opinions. Take my, quite
unreasonable, one, for example.

:-)

Cheers!

M.




Peter Craven wrote:

>Hello
>
>I am looking at purchasing some Amiga 3.5" floppy drives for the Master/
>BBC.
>I could not easily find a simple answer to either of the following in the
>Archive:
>
>1. Can any 3.5" Floppy Drive be used on the Master/ BBC? Could someone
>indicate a
>Website where information re: required adjustments can be found?
>
>2. Do wires have to be twisted for connection? There seems to be varied
>opinions?
>
>Cheers
>
>Peter
>
>
>
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