Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!uunet!labrea!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!zorch!pacbell!att!mtune!ethos!bacchus!darren From: darren@bacchus (Darren Friedlein) Newsgroups: unix-pc.general Subject: 3.5" drive on the UNIXpc - Instructions Message-ID: <532@bacchus> Date: 2 Jul 88 04:55:11 GMT Organization: The Humanities Forum - Research Triangle Park; Durham, NC Lines: 65 Here's how to get an 800K 3.5" drive working on a UNIXpc. The process should be similar for the 1.6M drive, but I'll confirm that in a few days and re-post. (With 1.6M disks, you only have to change disks 1/4th as often and these disks are smaller) First, get a Toshiba FDD4216G0K or comperable drive (FDD4202A0K should work). The following jumper settings apply to the Toshiba drives, so some modifications may be needed for other 3.5" drives. Set the DS (Drive Select) jumper on the bottom to "1" (new system -- DS0 on older drives). Next, make sure the jumper at the back of the drive is set to "RDY." Next, get a drive conversion kit to conver the 3.5" connectors to 5.25". For the Toshiba, this is something called '3 1/2" Floppy Disk Drive Universal Intallation [for ND352]'. The jumper on the card must be set to B. Now get a long floppy drive cable. The best way to get the right cable is to go to your local computer store and ask for an AT floppy drive cable for one drive. Be sure to ask for a "straight through" cable as a cable with a twist will require you to move the DS jumpers on your drives up one. Next is the hard part... find an extension cable for the power cable. You may have to get this specially made. A last alternative is to splice a foot or two of wire between where the power connector meets the motherboard and where it meets the drive. Now take the 5.25" drive out of your UNIXpc and pull the power cable and I/O cable outside the case. Put the 3.5" and 5.25" drives in a case if you have one. You will have to connect the cables to the drive you want to use. Now the hardware is taken care of.... Run the shell archive posted in unix-pc.sources through sh and move all the files starting with MD into the /usr/lib/iv. You're set! To format the disk at 800K, enter $ iv -i /dev/rfp020 /usr/lib/iv/MD10Lnl A new version of fffc (Flexible Floppy Formatter and Coppier) is also included in the shell archive that lets you work with the 3.5" disks. Now a couple requests. First, a program to format 3.5" disks in MSDOS format for portability and secondly, a version of Mtools that take advantage of this format (the current version may work, I don't have a formatted disk to try this with). Lastly, if someone has trouble finding any of the hardware, call or write me and I'll see what I can do. -darren ____ / \ | Rt 4, Box 416, Durham, NC 27703 _____|_____ Darren G. Friedlein data (bacchus) : 919/596-7746 / | \ voice : 919/596-9492 ( | ) \____/ __/ {mcnc|icus|ditka|ethos|gladys|bakerst}!bacchus!darren