bruceb@amiga.UUCP (Bruce Barrett) (11/22/85)
In article <233@mips.UUCP> kim@mips.UUCP (Kim DeVaughn) writes: > >Does anyone have any experience/recommendations on the advisability >of turning the external 3.5" disk-drive on its side (so the slot is >vertical) in order to save some space? Same question on the 5.25" >drive? Bill Kolb, one of our chief hardware people (sorry I'm not very good about remembering titles in this environment) says (I paraphrase): "There is no reason I know of that placing our floppy drives vertically should cause a problem. This applies to both 3.5 and 5.25 drives." Several people around here have placed their 3.5" drives vertically. The only "problem" I have noticed is that when you press the eject button it can shoot the diskette across the room (well, in a small room :-)) I've *never* seen anybody try the 5.25" drives vertically. >BTW, anyone know who's drives Amiga uses? Again from Bill: "3.5 inch = Nec or Matsushita. 5.25 inch = Alps" =-=-=-=-=-=- O T H E R I M P O R T A N T N O T E S -=-=-=-=-=-= 1) You can *not* just buy a generic drive (either type) and plug it in to your Amiga! There is a little "front-end" board that we place between the cable and "generic" drive. It has to do with our drive selection scheme. 2) They connect using a DB-23 (somewhat rare, but availability should be improving). 3) NEVER, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER Yank the cardboard shipping "restraint"(?) out of a 3.5" drive. NEVER. The correct way of getting this thing out is to press the "eject" button. There have been reported cases that removing this "protector" (by force) and then attempting to "jam" a diskette into a drive that is already in the "I've-got-a-diskette-in-me" state.
cc1@ucla-cs.UUCP (11/24/85)
Just what is this 'front end' board and how much will it cost? I see little reason to upgrade to a new computer when my current drives will be useless and I can't buy new drives at $100 for 720K, but must get $400 360K ones.