Internal 3.5" with no mods to case

[joska]

A few weeks ago I rescued a CPC464 from the dump, this turned out to be a fun little machine that I actually played quite a bit with. So I decided to get myself a 6128 to avoid the slow taperecorder. A couple of days ago I received the 6128, and I quickly connected an external 3.5" floppy as I have no discs for the internal drive.

The external drive was a big success, and I quickly wanted an internal drive too so I could copy images from the external to the internal drive using WriteDSK. I browsed this forum and found a couple of interesting threads on this topic. Unfortunately they all modified the case to be able to fit the drive. I hate modifying cases - it's usually irreversible. Who knows, I might want to reinstall the 3" drive in the future in case I find myself some disks for it. So I made an attempt to fit a standard 3.5" drive without modifying the CPC's case, and I think I succeeded.



This is the floppy I will install, here shown with the outer casing removed. A simple Drive Ready mod is done, and parts of the chassis on the right side of the drive is cut off to narrow the drive. It will now fit in the 6128's drivebay. This drive has a chassis of soft stamped metal so I could easily snip off bits of it with a pair of pliers.

Then I started to experiment with different ways of mounting the drive in the CPC. Last year I built a complete case for my FireBee (acp.atari.org) which is assembled without a single screw, everything snaps together and is held in place by the case itself. I wanted to mount the internal floppy in the CPC in a similar fashion. I wanted the drive to just drop in and then be held securely in place by brackets/tabs in the case itself. So I made some crude brackets from some pieces of wood and attached them to the bottom half of the case using double adhesive tape.



On top of the brackets I glued some pieces of door seal, this is compressed between the bracket and the drive when the drive is laid ontop of these brackets and the case is assembled. The drive rests on the original drive mounting points to the left, and the two wooden brackets on the right. The rear wooden bracket is preventing the drive from sliding backwards, the top of the case prevents it from sliding forwards.

As you can see there are no modifications to the case, the brackets and door seal can easily be removed if necessary.




Here's the installed drive. It just rests on top of the brackets, it's not secured in any way. The top half of the case takes care of that. As you can see I also use a bit of door seal between the drive and the backstop to prevent rattling and ensure a tight fit.

The only modification to the CPC is the drive connector which I replaced with a 34-pin one. I considered making an adapter lead but the cable is plenty long enough to allow reinstalling the original 26-pin connector if I want to revert this mod.





Here's the assembled case. The drive fits snugly and doesn't move at all when inserting/removing disks. As you can see the drive is not perfectly centered in the drivebay. I might trim the other side of the drive too adjust this, ideally the drive should be moved about 2mm to the right.

I also need to make a front plate, but I'm leaving for a short vacation tomorrow morning so that will have to wait a week or so. I'll need a side selector too, to avoid messing up the case the side A/B switch must be mounted to the front plate. I'll have to figure out a way to make this look OK too.

Btw a nice side-effect of switching to a "modern" floppy drive is that it runs on 5v alone. So I could unplug the 12v lead from the motherboard and store it with the 3" drive and the 26 pin connector.

[Bryce]

Nice mod. You can use a black DVD case to make a front panel quite nicely, I've got good results from using these. The side switch should be easy to mount on that too.

I like your modded PC PSU in the background too. I suspect the banana-plug outputs are 2x 5V (red) and 12V (Yellow), but what's the blue one -12V or 3.3V?

Bryce.

[TotO]

Line IN/Line Out/Speakers/Micro ... It's for listening/recording the Power Supply sound !
The best was the Headphone, so it came 0dB for others !!! 

[joska]

Nice mod. You can use a black DVD case to make a front panel quite nicely, I've got good results from using these. The side switch should be easy to mount on that too.

I have a tray from a dead printer, this has almost the same texture and colour as the original drive.

I like your modded PC PSU in the background too. I suspect the banana-plug outputs are 2x 5V (red) and 12V (Yellow), but what's the blue one -12V or 3.3V?

That's 3.3V.

[joska]

A small update:





I used a 5.25" drive bay cover from a Dell. I'm not very happy with it, I will clean up the cuts with a file, maybe it will look decent in the end. I'm also waiting for some miniature latching push-buttons for side-select and DualOS-selector.


Oh, and the fit is better when the case is screwed together

[beaker]

Any way of attaching a red LED to the bottom left like with the original 3 inch drive? May help to break up the black facia a bit more? Otherwise looks good 

[joska]

Any way of attaching a red LED to the bottom left like with the original 3 inch drive?

I thought of that. I have some rectangular LEDs too, but I don't have small enough tools to make an accurate hole for it

[Bryce]

Square / Rectangle LEDs always look shit, no matter how hard you try to make the hole. It's impossible to get it right. The round LEDs may be less cool, but they always look better if done properly.

Bryce.

[Gryzor]

Man, this is a great job. I really respect the idea of not irreversibly modifying stuff and the execution is well done, too!


The fascia is nearly good enough. Bear in mind that even the original CPC fascia is not 100% similar to the rest of the case...