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Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine

From Kurt Nowak <kurt.m.nowak@gmail.com>
Newsgroups comp.sys.apollo
Subject Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine
Date 2012-04-09 12:04 -0700
Organization http://groups.google.com
Message-ID <16440998.599.1333998278948.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynvv7> (permalink)
References <31479178.2239.1333644744040.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@yncd8> <616fe00f-90b1-4cbb-a902-405aa351d894@j15g2000vbt.googlegroups.com>

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On Friday, April 6, 2012 8:04:00 PM UTC-7, Jim Rees wrote:
> On Apr 5, 12:52 pm, Kurt Nowak <kurt.m.no...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hey Guys...
> >
> > So I have a bunch of 8" floppies that I would like to get the data Apollo off of. The problem is that my only 8" drive is attached to a dead DN420. Would a "newer" say DN3500 accept this floppy drive (temporarily) so I can get the data? I can use either a machine running SR10 or SR9.7.5...
> 
> Not without a whole lot of work. The floppy controller in the dn3500
> has a 34 pin sa450 connector for a 3 or 5 inch drive. The 8 inch drive
> has a 50 pin sa850 connector. The timing is the same, they both spin
> at the same speed, and some of the signals are the same, but there are
> some extra signals on the 8 inch.
> 
> I once did the opposite of this, attached a 5 inch drive to a dn330.
> It was not easy. And what you're trying to do will be harder. But I
> can send you my notes if you want to give it a shot.
> 
> Another approach would be to find some other non-Apollo system (CP/M?)
> that already has an 8 inch floppy drive, convince it to read the 1K
> Apollo sectors, image the floppies, then read them on the emulator.

Thanks, Jim. That does sound like more work than I was willing to put in. I just wanted to test the waters and see if one of you knew what I was getting myself into before I start pulling hardware out of machines...
I was planning on giving my DN420 away (hopefully for a little cash) to Bear at typewritten...Perhaps he can get the machine to work and at that point maybe he can extract the data off the floppies for me. We'll see...not a big rush on this one.

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Thread

Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Kurt Nowak <kurt.m.nowak@gmail.com> - 2012-04-05 09:52 -0700
  Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Jim Rees <jim.rees@rees.org> - 2012-04-06 20:04 -0700
    Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine supervinx <nessuno@libero.it> - 2012-04-07 08:02 +0000
      Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Jim Rees <jim.rees@rees.org> - 2012-04-07 16:34 -0700
        Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine supervinx <nessuno@libero.it> - 2012-04-08 00:08 +0000
          Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Jim Rees <jim.rees@rees.org> - 2012-04-08 05:54 -0700
            Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Lothar Paltins <lptmp01@arcor.de> - 2012-04-08 23:21 +0200
    Re: Attaching an 8" floppy drive to DN3/4XXX machine Kurt Nowak <kurt.m.nowak@gmail.com> - 2012-04-09 12:04 -0700

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