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From: jfreem@uncecs.edu (Joe Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: floppy drives / old cubes
Summary: most people don't have space
Message-ID: <1991Feb11.120342.27349@uncecs.edu>
Date: 11 Feb 91 12:03:42 GMT
References: <1991Feb5.153658.24248@athena.mit.edu> <1991Feb06.034803.5577@ecst.csuchico.edu> <1077@nada.cs.utexas.edu>
Distribution: na
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
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There are two issues that, immediatly, come to mind on the idea of adding
floppies to an old cube.

1)	Most people have an OD and a full hight hard drive in their cube.
	This means that there is no space in the box for the floppy. So,
	you get a choice of having your hard driver external or the floppy
	external.  Since the hard driver is a boot device, you will 
	probably want it mounted in the case. Either way, you still have
	an external box.

2)	How many people would be willing to pay $$$ for the necessary
	panels and hardware for the changes?  You will need some new
	sheet metal for the mount points.  And, you will need a new black
	faceplate for the front.  Swapping the sheet metal attached to the
	power supply, probably does not count as a user servicable thing
	so a the repair center's might have to be used.  I have no idea
	what the two pieces of metal would cost but I can imagine that 
	most people would probably "just say no"

An alternate plan, might be to fabricate a new piece of sheet metal that
allows the floppy to be mounted in one of the slots.  Of course that means
you'd have to reach around back every time. Not too good either.


>>If NeXT would sell the damn faceplate from the new NeXTs (selling
>>the new drive bay chassis wouldn't be bad either...), I would buy
>>an internal floppy.  Unfortunately, this ain't so, thus I'm--as
>>well as other older cube owners--SOL and can't go through this
>>route.  So, I will, reluctantly, buy an external floppy
>>drive...yuck, how unpleasing.
>>
>
>I agree with the above poster - having an external floppy drive
>would be aesthetically unpleasing.  However, considering the
>general trends regarding software distribution on opticals
>and 2.88 floppy drives, floppiless cube owners will be left in
>the cold if they do not purchase a floppy drive.
>
>I too would like to purchase a new-style drive chassis and the
>new-style faceplate for an old-style cube.  Is there any technical
>reason why this is not feasible?  The benefits are obvious - four
>half-height device mount-points instead of two full-height mount
>points (which drops to one full-height mount-point if you have an
>optical drive) and a way to install an _internal_ floppy.


-- 
Joe Freeman	jfreem@uncecs.edu
The opinions espressed here are my own and are not shared by my employer  or
anyone else I know of.  Flames can be mailed to me or routed to /dev/null.