Date   : Wed, 07 Nov 1990 15:53:42 GMT
From   : usc!samsung!noose.ecn.purdue.edu!ea.ecn.purdue.edu!wieland@ucsd.edu (Jeffrey J Wieland)
Subject: Kaypro II-84: SSDD to DSDD Change

In article <4060001@hpnmdla.HP.COM> donm@hpnmdla.HP.COM (Don Montgomery)
writes:
>This may have been asked many times previously, but I missed it-
>
>I have a "stock" Kaypro II-84 with 191K SSDD drives.  What do I need to
convert
>to DSDD drives besides the drives themselves? (The originals are indeed
single-
>sided, one head with a rubbing block on the other side.)  Does anyone have the
>code for the monitor ROM changes?  What other hardware changes are required,
if
>any?  With the demise of MICROCORNUCOPIA magazine and the advent of MS/DOS,
all
>the advertisers for this sort of thing have disappeared.
>
>Can anyone offer any help?              Thanks

Advent Products should still have upgrade products for Kaypros.  They sell
the TurboROM for $60, which knows about DSDD (and 96 tpi) drives.  They 
also sell a drive decoder board that adds the additional logic for 
double-sided drives (also allows up to four drives) -- it goes for $40.  
I believe the TurboROM manual has instructions on how to add the side 
select circuit yourself, too.  Advent's number is 714-630-8172.

By the way, Bridger Mitchell's company, Plu*Perfect Systems apparently
wrote both the TurboROM code and the Turbo BIOS code.

I have no relationship with Advent or Plu*Perfect -- I just think that
they have darned good products that work together.  My Kaypro 2X has
Advent's TurboROM, host-adapter, 1 Meg RAM disk, real-time clock, 
Western Digital WD-1002-005 hard disk controller and a Seagate ST-138-1 
(30 meg) hard drive.  I am using NZCOM and ZSDOS, and it all works.
I also have a MicroSphere Color Graphics board in it, but that's another
story...
--
                           Jeff Wieland
                       wieland@acn.purdue.edu