technews@iitmax.iit.edu (Kevin Kadow) (06/05/91)
I can pick up IBM low-density 3.5 drives for ~50, and looking at the pinouts
for the IBM devices and for the A500 external connector, it seems that they
use the same signals and power levels.
Assuming I could find an acceptable case and a DB23 connector, would there
be any major obstacles to this hack??
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technews@iitmax.iit.edu kadokev@iitvax (bitnet)
My Employer Disagrees.davem@hp-lsd.COS.HP.COM (Dave K. Martin) (06/06/91)
Yes, you can interface low density IBM drives to an Amiga easily. The biggest problem is you need a two chip circut to latch the drive motor on. In the several that I have adapted, I've also had to fool with getting the correct diskchange signal generated. None of the IBM drives I've used generated the proper signal but that can be generated using an unused flip-flop on the interface chips. With the exception of the diskchange, the same interface is used in the C= 1010 and the California Access CA-880's. I suppose the 'easily' in the opening sentence assumes that you have a fair amount of electronics hacking experience :-) Even with the experience, I learned an awful lot about how disk drives work on my first attempt. davem