Following on from trying to get a drive to work with my vine Replay (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=19609) I have tried plugging my 3.5” drive into my beeb. However that didn’t go well.
The cable looks like a PC floppy cable?
It has the twisted wires I normally associate with the PC.
What initially confused me was that it fitted on my Master ok - it came with the Master. Turns out the Master has had a pin removed.
So the question is - can i just put a normal beeb floppy cable on this? If so i can steal the one from my girl and try it.
Adventure Language on GitHub
Atom, issue 5, YARRB + video noise killer
Elk
A number of econetted (is that a word?) Beebs
BBC Master, Datacentre + HDD, pi co-proc, econet, NULA
In the PC universe (I can't say "PC world" or people will think I'm doing sponsored posts!) many floppy drive cables have a keyed pin. I think this is because, for some obscure reason, cables were being manufactured without the usual plastic key on the outside of the connector, which meant that it was possible to plug the cable into the motherboard the wrong way around. I've no idea if this started because some manufacturers put the 34-pin headers (with plastic surround) the wrong way around on their motherboards, but the common fault of "my drive is spinning and the light's stuck on" was caused by inserting the cable the wrong way around, thereby grounding and activating all the control lines (including the write enable line - so you may have just wiped a track of your data).
What intrigues me is that PC cables blanked out pin 3 as a key pin, whereas your cable has pin 5 blanked. Pin 5 is a ground pin, as are most/all of the odd pins, so reconnecting that one with a new cable shouldn't impact your drive's operation in any way.
BBC Model B 32K issue 7, Sidewise ROM board with 16K RAM Archimedes 420/1 upgraded to 4MB RAM, ZIDEFS with 512MB CF card RiscPC 600 under repair Acorn System 1 home-made replica
A small amount of brute force and there is now a space for the pin.
And it works very nicely. Next step, find an MMC device in the cupboard and then Twin Kingdom Valley with save states thanks to the replay! I hope.
Adventure Language on GitHub
Atom, issue 5, YARRB + video noise killer
Elk
A number of econetted (is that a word?) Beebs
BBC Master, Datacentre + HDD, pi co-proc, econet, NULA
, or drill / cut it out, as they are all gnd that side anyways, so all joined
