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Adding that second floppy to my Legacy Mac

Submitted by doug-doug the mighty on October 28, 2004 - 3:52pm. Hardware Hacks

Okay, this may be impossible, but some one may know...

I have a Quadra 950, with the stock floppy drive. I also have a spare floppy drive that has matching specs (not the same, but close enough...).

Is there any way to add the sceond drive to the Quadra, giving me to working floppy drives. I am not afraid to make my own cable if that is all that is needed, but I suspect it is not as simple as a cable select configuration. Anyone ever done a hack like this?

--DDTM

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martakz's picture

I do not think that is possib

Submitted by martakz on October 28, 2004 - 6:37pm.

I do not think that is possible at all.

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second floppy

Submitted by williamahearn on October 28, 2004 - 8:59pm.

Hey,

The two Macs that I can remember that had two floppy drives were the early SE and the Mac II. There may be more. The critical piece of information is that each floppy in those models had its own mobo connecter. Meaning, that they weren't ganged as in a SCSI cable. If you could create a cable that merged both floppies it might work albeit that one drive would work while the other one waited. While that's impressive with an Apple //, it probably isn't something you want in a Q950.

William

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The Mac LC was also sold in a

Submitted by vga4life on October 28, 2004 - 9:50pm.

The Mac LC was also sold in a dual-internal-floppy configuration in the education market. But yes, the LC, the II, and the SE were the only Macs that ever supported dual internal floppies.

Fun fact: The Mac SE was the only Mac that ever supported *THREE* (non-SCSI, non-USB) floppy drives with 2 internal floppies and an external floppy port.

In this configuration, Cmd-Shift-1 and Cmd-Shift-2 ejected disks from the lower and upper internal floppy drives, respectively. Cmd-Shift-0 was used to eject the external drive, since Cmd-Shift-3 was reserved for screen dumps.

Of course, nowadays one can hook as many floppy drives as one likes to a Mac with USB. SCSI floppy drives were once reasonably common as well, which might provide a way to put a second internal floppy into a
Q950 - it probably won't have that great old Mac floppy "look and feel" however.

-vga4life

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eeun's picture

Not promising

Submitted by eeun on October 28, 2004 - 10:18pm.

Looking at the pinouts for the Mac floppy, there doesn't seem to be any kind of sense line or equivalent to tell one floppy from another.



Pin Name Description

1    GND     Ground

2    PH0     Phase 0: state control line

3   GND     Ground

4   PH1      Phase 1: state control line

5   GND     Ground

6   PH2      Phase 2: state control line

7   GND     Ground

8   PH3      Phase 3: register write strobe

9   +5V        +5 volts

10   /WRREQ       Write data request

11  +5V     +5 volts

12  SEL     Head select

13  +12V   +12 volts

14   /ENBL Drive enable

15  +12V   +12 volts

16  RD       Read data

17  +12V    +12 volts

18  WR       Write data

19  +12V    +12 volts

20  n.c.       Not connected

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Dr. Webster's picture

One drive per bus

Submitted by Dr. Webster on October 28, 2004 - 11:19pm.

Because of the way Apple has its floppy bus set up to deliver power to the drive as well as data, you can only have one drive per bus. If you want two internal drives, you'll need to have either two internal floppy connectors, or one internal connector and hack a connector onto the motherboard's external floppy port (assuming the board has one).

Add the original Mac Classic to the list of machines that came with two floppy drives. A coworker of mine told me his dad has one in his garage. I was skeptical at first, but he said it was indeed a Mac Classic. If we still worked together, I'd try to get a picture of it from him.

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One for the road duality

Submitted by williamahearn on October 29, 2004 - 12:14am.

Hey

Your list isn't complete. The IIfx also shipped with two floppies.

Not nit-pucking, just adding to the mix.

William

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dankephoto's picture

multi-floppies

Submitted by dankephoto on October 29, 2004 - 4:12am.

nope, only one floppy possible in a Classic.

The Mac II, IIx and iifx, plus the SE and LC. I think that's it.

My second Mac was a dual-800K floppy SE, and I got an external 800K drive giving me a triple-floppy monster machine! Damn it was slow though. I finally sprung $350 for a 160MB HD from LaCie. Wow! Cool Mac

As for dual floppies in a Q900/950 . . . I'd say it's pretty near impossible. the board only supports one (not counting possible SCSI-based jobbies.)

Maybe I shouldn't ask . . . but DDTM, why the heck do you want two floppies?

If we ever took a vote as to who here tackles the most-useless-but-most-difficult hacks . . . hmmm, who'd win, DDTM or jt? Laughing out loud

dan k

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floptical

Submitted by Wayne on October 29, 2004 - 12:23pm.

About the only way I can think of to get a second floppy drive on a 950 is to add a floptical drive. They're a pretty scarce device but you see one for sale every now and then.

For anyone unfamiliar with them, a floptical is a drive that reads 1.4mb floppies as well as 21mb disks. They were made by a number of manufacturers and while there may have been ide drives, I've only run across SCSI ones.

Wayne

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doug-doug the mighty's picture

:D

Submitted by doug-doug the mighty on October 29, 2004 - 12:38pm.
Quote:
Maybe I shouldn't ask . . . but DDTM, why the heck do you want two floppies?

'cuz I got an extra one lying around and I cannot get it to work on my iMac above OS 8.5! Laughing out loud

--DDTM

» --DDTM ('Fritter Critter' since Apr 26 2004 - 18:16)

'If it ain't broke, take it apart anyways. If you can't take it apart, break it so that you can fix it.'

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DrBunsen's picture

[quote]Of course, nowadays on

Submitted by DrBunsen on October 29, 2004 - 4:31pm.
Quote:
Of course, nowadays one can hook as many floppy drives as one likes to a Mac with USB

And do crazy stuff like this:http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

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Re: multi-floppies

Submitted by jt on October 30, 2004 - 3:49am.
dankephoto wrote:
If we ever took a vote as to who here tackles the most-useless-but-most-difficult hacks . . . hmmm, who'd win, DDTM or jt? Laughing out loud

Useless? Roll Eyes

jt

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