External Bare inch drive cabling

[CraigsBar]

Hi,


The external disc drives most commonly used with the CPC are 3.5 inch. However on occasion I need to copy from one 3 inch drive to another and to do that I would need a bonkers expensive FD-1. unless......


Is there a simple wiring diagram to show which wires can be removed froma standard floppy connector to make a adaptor cable that will pluf into a standard CPC floppy cable and provide a 26 pin connector for a standard 3 inch floppy drive (as I have 2 or 3 spare bare drives and think buying a large and cumbersome FD-1 unneccessary if a simple adaptor cable can be made to remove the excess wires.


Craig

[Bryce]

So you want a 34way to 26way wiring diagram? I think I did that once, will have to look and see where I put it.

Bryce.

[CraigsBar]

So you want a 34way to 26way wiring diagram? I think I did that once, will have to look and see where I put it.

Bryce.

Thanks bryce that would be perfect. There is a 26way to 34way shown on the wiki. But it seems inconsistant with with daft back to front cable (Track 1 on the cable to pin 26 on the drive) that Amstrad seem to use on the 3 inch drives


I want to get this right I cannot afford to fry a 3 inch drive, although I have spares (One of which is a 80 track Double sided model) I do not have an abundant number of them.


The one I do have is a 5v model which will make powering it easier (Oh I also have a 5v one in one of my CPC 6128's so no 12v lead needed on there)


Craig

[Bryce]

The 26 to 34 way adapter diagram is from me and it does "the twist" (Track 1 on the cable to pin 26 on the drive) and I have built this cable many times, so I can confirm that it is correct.

Bryce.

[The Last Bandit]

I used that wiki info to build my 3.5"-3" external combo drive and it worked fine without too much fannying about.

[TFM]

The external disc drives most commonly used with the CPC are 3.5 inch. However on occasion I need to copy from one 3 inch drive to another and to do that I would need a bonkers expensive FD-1. unless......

Hi. As long as you want to copy a Data or System/Vendor or IBM formatted 3" disc you can do that easy and very quick with FutureOS. It reads / writes a full 3" disc in 9 seconds. And you only need one drive :-)

[CraigsBar]

Hi. As long as you want to copy a Data or System/Vendor or IBM formatted 3" disc you can do that easy and very quick with FutureOS. It reads / writes a full 3" disc in 9 seconds. And you only need one drive :-)

I really want to like FutureOS, but I am sorry I just cannot. I have not managed to get comfortable with the GUI, I like the fact that the CPC has 3 options in the next gen OS sector (I am counting FW 3.1 as an OS here as it does massively change the look and feel of the machine) I know technically it is a very impressinve piece of coding, but I just do not 'like' it.


For me disc copying means Parados for file copies and Xexor for disc copies.


Although Xexor can and does backup a 3 inch floppy in one pass (with a Symbiface or other 256kb or larger memory expansion) I occasionally would like to do A->B copies and therefore need 2 3 inch drives.


Since I have multiple spare 3 inch drives I do not feel inclined to spend a small fortune to buy a FD1 on ebay.


Craig

[TFM]

Never mind, taste is a personal thing. F.e. I don't like all that windows crap.
Probably it depends just on getting used to something, or even more: Getting used to something the first time.