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Rocky Mountains 12+ 5.25" external bays in an ATX case

Covers: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Colorado
bolex

bolex

Experienced Member
Joined
Feb 6, 2021
Messages
434
Location
Utah
I'm working on a project and need a computer case with at least 12 5.25" external bays. Links to eBay or other marketplaces would be appreciated.

The Antec twelve hundred, the LIAN Li PC-P80, the Lian Li PC-A77F, and the Xigmatek Elysium are a few cases that meet this criteria. I'm sure there are quite a few more out there.


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I picked up this Antec Twelvehundred on a local for sale site. This will work perfect. I just need to get the ATX to AT conversion adapter for the ATX power supply. I'll be installing a 386 in this.

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VERAULT said:
What is your project?
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Just an experiment of sorts. I plan on installing 3 floppy controllers and twelve 5.25" floppy drives. It's silly really, but I think it will be pretty cool when it's done.
 
bolex said:
Just an experiment of sorts. I plan on installing 3 floppy controllers and twelve 5.25" floppy drives. It's silly really, but I think it will be pretty cool when it's done.
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Well its an interesting experiment. What would be your operating system? MS DOS?
 
VERAULT said:
What would be your operating system? MS DOS?
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Yes. I'm going with DOS. It's going to be a while before I have it all together. I want to use the same drive types and I only have 4 identical DD drives and 2 identical 1.2MB drives, but that is enough to do a proof of concept to get the controllers working peacefully together.
 
DOS is a relative term.. almost all classic computers have some sort of DOS.. Apple II .. TRS 80.. but i get what you mean.

Keep us posted.. should be interesting.
 
It's slowly coming together. I have a few drives being shipped to me and I have a few more I need to get out of storage. I should have all the remaining parts by the end of next week. I'm going to spend this weekend getting the 2nd and 3rd floppy controllers working. Floppy Controller 1 is tested and working fine.

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Here are the 3 floppy controllers that I'll be using. 2 of them need some modifications to work. One needs a crystal swap, and 2 need the 2nd header added. Originally these were high speed floppy tape backup controllers.

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Careful--some of those "turbo" tape backup controllers don't bring all of the usual control lines out to the headers. And at least a couple of them use 48MHz crystals instead of 24.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Careful--some of those "turbo" tape backup controllers don't bring all of the usual control lines out to the headers
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Thanks Chuck! I've used one of these in the past as a 4 floppy controller and it seemed to work just fine. I used it for several months as a secondary. I did replace the 48MHz crystal with a 24 MHz one to get it to work. Would Dave Dunfield's TestFDC verify that all the capabilities or are there other tests I should try?
 
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There's the funny thing about TestFDC--it claims that two of my systems can't do 128-byte sector MFM. But they work just fine. I've got a private version somewhere that works better and uses the DISKETTE.CFG file.
 
There's the funny thing about TestFDC--it claims that two of my systems can't do 128-byte sector MFM
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Thanks! I'll start with the TestFDC. I've tested all 3 controllers as boot devices and they seem to be working fine. I have other 4 floppy controllers that I can try to use, but I don' have 3 of the exact same controller. Also, these are nice too because I can jumper assign IRQ, DMA and IO Address.

I did take a quick glance at the 82078 spec sheet and compared it to these controllers. It does seem that everything is tracing to where I think it would go, but I guess we will find out if that' true or not.
 
the Intel 82078 is broken when it comes to FM. Inherited the defects of the 82077AA-1
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That's too bad, but It'll probably be ok as an initial proof of concept. I'll work with what I have for now and then think about what would be the ideal floppy controllers down the road. I do have two CC4's, but I think using them in this would be a bit of a waste.
 
I haven't kept up with Serge and his controllers, but given that they use the NS PC8477 FDCs, they should be fine. Or any controller using the NS DP8473 chips, provided that you can reconfigure port/DMA/IRQ.
That 8473 shows up on a lot of ISA SCSI+floppy cards, even if it's not labeled as such (e.g. Future Domain and DTC).
 
It's starting to fill in. I ran out of DSDD drives in black (The DSDD drives are black, the 80 track HD drives are in beige). These all booted just fine with the same boot disk.

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VERAULT said:
Looks like you are ready to start cranking out your own shareware disks 35 years too late.
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If vinyl records can have a huge resurgence, then I don't see why floppies can't. I'm just ahead of the curve. :)
 
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