floppy expander - use 8"" drives with a 5 1/4"" interface
use 8" drives with a 51/4" interface Someone once said "Small is beautiful" and we wholeheartedly agree with him. In the case of this circuit, "small" refers to the number of components it uses. It shows that two connectors (one 50-way and one 34-way) and a length of 50-way rib- bon cable is all that is needed to connect an eight inch floppy disk drive to an interface intended for a five and a quarter inch diskette. What we are actually doing here is making the computer "think" that the 8" drive is in fact a 51/4" unit. In order to achieve this two things are needed. First a cable must be made to link the 8" drive"s 50-way connec- tor to the 34-way one on the floppy disk interface. Note in passing that 1.3. 6 ... 33 signal ground O0 HD O 0 WPRT 4 O026 T all the "uneven" lines are grounded in order to protect against cross-talk. The second "difficulty" with connec- ting the 8" drive is that it has four lines which the 51/4" unit does not. This is not strictly true, but in the small...
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