Floppy disk drive

OK, so I am new to this. I have a 9100a with what appears to be a bad
floppy and a temperamental hard drive. So I can probably use it for as
long as the HDD lasts, but I would like to make some insurance and to
do that I have to start by getting a floppy running.

First try, stuff a modern drive on and see what happens. Nothing
useful, of course - the thing uses what appears to be a custom drive.
I check the pinout. Most of it is OK; here are the problem pins:

Pin 2 Density select Listed as spare, but could be set by the 9100a
Pin 4 Reserved Change 2 detect
Pin 10 Motor enable A DS0
Pin 14 DRV SEL A CHNG1
Pin 34 Disk change READY input on FDD controller

Given that I am only interested in Drive A, here is what I am thinking:

Pin 2 Cut and (ground or float) on floppy side to ensure always double density
Pin 4 Ignore or cut
Pin 14 Cut and connect to pin 10 on floppy side
Pin 34 looks OK; disk change goes with the disk loaded or not. Maybe
jumper to 14 on the controller side. May, however, have a logic level
problem.

My thinking is that maybe I can get the 9100a to accept an HD floppy,
but using its cranky format. If I can create disks in the new format,
things could be good.
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Received on Sun Jun 12 10:11:30 2005