(c)1990 Golden Triangle, Inc. (c)1990 Wilson Van Alst All rights reserved. Fm: Bernie Skoch To: All Has anyone hooked up an external 5.25" drive to the Model 600 through its external disk drive port, or am I dreaming? If you have, do you know what the pin-outs are on the thing (I gotta get the tech ref manual for this one...) - 0 - Fm: Steve Ringley To: Bernie Skoch I have been meaning to try this with the standard Radio Shack external drives. When my memory cards come in I will sucker my salesman pals into cracking one open and we'll give it a shot. Incidently, I have the Service Manual, and one thing that I know for sure is that the second side enable from the chip was not connected to the port. - 0 - Fm: Bernie Skoch To: Steve Ringley Well, I ain't real swuft on drives. When you say the "second side enable" from the chip isn't hooked up to the port, are you saying that the controller chip DOES address the port, but only for a single-sided drive? Thanks for your help. (I've been wrestling with whether to spring for the measly $75 or so for another drive for my 3000 (AT), so I can use it to format disks to interchange with my 600, or whether to take one of these 5.25 bare drives I have kicking around and trying to get it working on the port of the 600. Since I have the drives already, that would be a cheaper alternative. Thanks again.) - 0 - Fm: Steve Ringley To: Bernie Skoch A couple hours I meant I guess...here is the poop: Return Signal Signal Input/ Pin Pin Name Output 1 2 Not Connected 3 4 In Use In 5 6 Drive Select 4 In 7 8 Index Out 9 10 Drive Select 1 In 11 12 Drive Select 2 In 13 14 Drive Select 3 In 15 16 Motor On In 17 18 Direction Sele In 19 20 Step In 21 22 Write Data In 23 24 Write Gate In 25 26 Track 00 Out 27 28 Write Protect Out 29 30 Read Data Out 31 32 Side One Select-Not Connected 33 34 Ready Out Active signals are lows. Other notes: controller is a WD2797, has 5"/8" mode with 5" mode enabled and double density enabled. System supposedly can only support one addtional drive. - 0 - Fm: Bernie Skoch To: All Well, with Steve Ringley's help I have managed to hook up an external 5.25" drive to a 600. I had an old 720K (that's right) 5.25" drive out of a Tandy 2000. I figured it would be fortuitous that it had 80 tracks (as does the 600's 3.5" drive). Interestingly, I get it to format okay with the 600, but my AT will not read the directory. I can read or write to it easily, though with the 600. I formatted the floppy in my AT (Tandy 3000) using the FMAT2000 utility (which formats a drive to Tandy 2000 specs (80 tracks, 720K). The 600 will read and write to that disk (and the directory is readable from both the AT and the 600). But when I go to READ a file with the AT (one which I've written with the 600), although I can see what appears to be a good directory, all I can read in is a screen full of what appear to be little "divided by" symbols (you know, a horizontal line with a dot on top and a dot on the bottom). - 0 - Fm: Steve Ringley To: Bernie Skoch 600 disk are supposed to be compatible with MS-DOS 2.X. I do not know what MSDOS the 3000 runs on, but I would suspect that it is 3.X. Perhaps booting a version 2 DOS on your 3000 (if that is possible) might get the 600 disks working on the 3000. This should mean that when I give those tandy drives a try next week, they should work O.K. also, and they are quite a bit cheaper than EWP's external drive... - 0 - Starting message #: 189653 Starting date: 05-Nov-89 06:18:47 Participants: Bernie Skoch 75376,12 Steve Ringley 73727,1202