HD disk drives (jumpers)

On 17 Oct 2001 18:56:37 , Hallvard Tangeraas wrote:

I bought a Toshiba 3.5" PC drive for a friend's ST. I adjusted the
jumpers and now it works perfectly. Of course it will only support 720k
or less disks. I do not see a problem with the Sony after the jumpers
are set correctly.

Edward S. Baiz Jr.
(Gamer)

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Hi Derryck!

Yes or you can just switch 10 and 12 over on the board by scratching the
trace.
--
Lyndon Amsdon

Actually, "Master" and "Slave" are terms which only apply to IDE hard
drives, not floppy drives.

The settings on a floppy are Device 0 or Device 1.

(No big deal, but you'll only confuse any tech people at a store if
you ask them how to set a floppy drive to "Slave".)

Unfortunately, as you say, ALL 3.5" floppy drives available today come
pre-set to Device 1.

Also, as you've noted, most drives no longer have any convenient way
to change the Device setting because no one ever used it anyway, so
manufacturers simply stopped spending the money on jumpers, headers
and circuit board real estate to support the easy changing of Device
numbers.

The ONLY sure way to know ahead of actually purchasing a drive
(assuming you don't find a store that will let you rip one open),
would be to obtain the data sheet for the drive from the manufacturer.

I haven't looked specifically for floppy drive data sheets, but most
hard drive manufacturers have this information easily available on
their web sites. It comes in very handy for the occasional obscure
brand or model whose jumpers are hidden or not marked. If you're
lucky, similar info may be available for floppy drives.

Failing that-

You've no doubt seen the floppy drive cable on an IBM compatible
system with the "twist" cut out section of cable.

The "twist" allows BOTH drives to be physically set to Device 1. The
"twisted" section reverses the drive select lines so one drive
responds as Device 0, even though its jumpers are set for Device 1.

As a "last resort", "bottom of the barrel", "necessity is the mother
of invention" solution, you COULD rewire the Atari drive cable to
simulate this "twist" and allow a standard Device 1 3.5" drive to
respond as Device 0.

Then ANY available 3.5" drive would work without modification.

You'd need a diagram of the IBM floppy cable to study- once you see
how the reversing of the signals is done it's easier to understand.

There's also a very SLIM possibility that you might be able to obtain
a floppy drive cable which was originally used to connect QIC-80 style
tape drives which had the normal floppy drive female connectors, but
which also had a male connector on it to allow the tape drive to be
inserted into the cable. This could serve as an "adapter" which would
eliminate the need to do ANY rewiring of the Atari cable.

The cable from the Atari would plug into the male tape drive connector
and the new floppy drive would plug into the "A" drive connector. The
floppy drive cable already has the "twist" needed, and you should be
up and running.

The problem would be locating a dinosaur cable.

BobR