Re: Disk ][ drives look good! :)

[david@uow.edu.au (David Wilson)]

spec@vax2.concordia.ca (Mitchell Spector) writes:
>    Speaking of quiet drives, I had the most whisper-silent Apple 
>compatible 5.25 drives (half-height) on my Apple II clone back in 
>the early 80's. You could hardly tell if they were loading, and
>they never made those grinding or clattering sounds when the head
>reset or there were errors on the diskette.

When I bought my first //e compatible, a Multitech MPF-III it came with
2 slim-line, belt drive, 40 track drives. One of them gave me trouble so I
paid a little more to swap it for a direct drive model. This is a standard
40 track half height drive with a little adapter card from the Apple 20 pin
cable to the standard 34 pin edge connector and 4 pin power connector.

The adapter card is very clever - it has a PAL, a 555 timer and a few one
shot chips. It stops stepping the head outwards when it reaches track 0
(no clatter) and is a very nice drive. The only thing I changed was the
capacitor on the 555 used to keep the drive spinning after you stop accessing
it - the time was either excessively short or long (cannot remember - it was
more than a decade ago).

I use this as the boot drive due to its silence when seeking to track 0.
--
David Wilson  Sch of Informatics, Uni of Wollongong, Australia  david@uow.edu.au