sacko@ihuxm.UUCP (09/19/83)
Does anyone know how to interface an 8" diskette drive to the IBM diskette drive adapter's external connector on the back of the PC? The proper signals appear to be present on this connector for interfacing an 8" drive, and the NEC PD765 is capable of handling such drives. I would like to know if anyone has interfaced an 8" drive in this manner and if there is any software available for controlling the drive once interfaced. Since I want to be able to read 8" diskettes which use a different directory scheme than the PC, I need to be able to specify the sector and track to be read. The diskettes will be formatted so I do not need software to format the 8" diskettes. In addition, I would be interested in any other ways of interfacing 8" drives to the PC.
BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB@sri-unix.UUCP (09/22/83)
From: Billy <BRACKENRIDGE@USC-ISIB> As I have mentioned in several articles in INFO-IBMPC at ISI we have a modified disk adaptor card from Flagstaff Engineering, and an 8" drive in a seperate cabinet with it's own power supply. The hardware for all this is very good. The hardware modifications to the standard board are necessary in order to use single density only. Vista and Maynard electronics also make boards to drive 8" drives as well as the standard drives, but I assume your question involved using using the standard board. Flagstaff will give you a refund when you send your board back to them as they must buy their boards from IBM for the same price as you and I. The software is another matter. They have conversion utilities for just about every form of 8" system imaginable. I suppose if you are a real CPM hacker you might know what track your directories are on and what a skew factor is. All this is a bit beyond me and I find the utilities a bit hard to use. We have been waiting nearly 6 months for a Displaywriter utility. The Tall Tree JFORMAT program supports everybody's 8" drive system but only allows DOS format files. Vista also has software similar to Tall Tree and probably works better with their board.