PDC Clipper

From: Baltissen, GJPAA (Ruud) (ruud.baltissen_at_abp.nl)
Date: 2005-07-28 12:40:37

Hallo Per,


Regarding the email that didn't get to the CBM-hackers, this appeared to be
my error. Last Tuesday I received a notice that my email (from days ago) was
blocked because the name was not on the list. That's how I found out that
the spamtrap in the name, which I thought I had removed, still existed.



Hallo allemaal,


As you know some time ago I bought a PDC Clipper. If you forgot what it was:
a c64 plus add-on board for extra I/O, 5" plasma screen, thermical printer
and a 3" floppydrive, all packed in a bussiness suitcase. The product as so
wasn't a success, the firm went bankrupt. But my first C64 was in fact the
MB, add-on card and the keyboard of such a PDC I bought in a shop that
bought the left-overs of the company.

The main problem from beginning on was that the 3" drive that came with the
PDC wasn't working well. Then I could lay my hands on two coming out a
brooken Amstrad PCW Joyce. First problem: the original drive had a 34-pins
edge connector as found on a 5.25" drive, the PCW one had a 26 pins.
Although I found a lot of info on the internet, not the needed pinout of
this drive :( 
Last week I could lay my hands on two CPC6128, that have the same internal
3" drive as well. The 6128 should have a 34 pins edge connector but mine
didn't, they had a 36 pins Centronics connector. Which meant that these must
be the Plus version. But problems again, the numbers of the pins of the
connector didn't match the ones mentioned in the docs from various places on
the Internet. But all those docs said that the lower row should be ground
and the upper row signals. And in my case it was the opposite. I finally
found out what is what by comparing the given lay-out with schematics of the
FDC-card of a PC and measuring what pin goes to what IC on the MB. As the 3"
drive was coupled to this Centronics connector as well, I found out what the
layout of the 26 pins connector was. Then I made a 34->26 convertor and
tested things.
But still things didn't work out for the PDC. On the end I found out that
these Amstrad 3" drives had power connectors where +5V and +12V were swapped
!!! 

Having a working 3" drive for my PDC now, the first thing I did was
formatting a disk and displaying the directory. Suprise: 780 blocks free! 40
tracks * 20 sectors/track ???


--
     ___
    / __|__
   / /  |_/     Groetjes, Ruud
   \ \__|_\
    \___|       URL: Ruud.C64.org














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