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Artisticleo

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2009
Messages
9
Location
Sarasota, Florida.
HURGH! I just blew an entire weekend and some days trying to build a floppy adapter for a Tandy 1100FD a friend pulled out of their garage for me. The thing works beautifully save for what was initially a shot drive belt.

I tried every other kind of replacement belt at my disposal (Yes, even went so far as fasioning a near perfect strip out of duct-tape) before looking up and finding a guide on how to make a standard 1.44MB floppy adapter. So, four days later here I am with parts scattered all across the place and still no working floppy drive.

Is there anybody selling these things pre-made by any chance? Hopefully within a college students budget?


I cant say it was a waste of time, attracted a lot of attention here in the coffee shop with this thing opened up, but without a multimeter and several instances of one wire connecting to six different pins....ugh. I don't even know where to go back and check to see if I messed up. The joints look good, if not bulky, but no shorting. And two ground wires, one five volt, 4 leads? Do I attach the wire to all four? Ugh, I need sleep, or coffee.
 
If you have that URL to the original instructions, that would be good :-D As in post it for the rest of us.
 
I've found that Plastibands make wonderful belt replacements. I've used them in 3" CF2 floppy drives and all sorts of other applications.

When you clear your head out, tell us exactly what you're trying to do and we'll try to help out. Right now you're rambling a bit...
 
Forgive me, moderately frustrated and sleep deprived by the time I wrote that originally. The PDF I found is through here: http://www.bagotronix.com/1100FD_drive_.PDF
Or just google search "Tandy 1100FD floppy drive adapter" its practically one of the first things listed.

It seemed like a better plan to take a working drive and adapt it, rather than try gerry-rigging a belt that would hardly be acurate and cause all sorts of data errors.
I've already desoldered the ribbon slot off of the original drive and split a standard floppy cable, stripped it, and soldered the wires to the pins according to that PDF. Everything is pretty easy and clean up untill the ground and power wires.

Computer boots perfectly, only issue is with the drive itself.
 
Never having seen the innards of your machine, I'm going to guess that the connector on the motherboard is a 26-conductor flex cable.

If that's the case, why not use an off-the-shelf Teac FD-05HF drive?
 
24 conductor actually, but yes indeed a flex cable, power and everything over it. I'm not the most familiar with these older hardware components, though I, like everyone and their brother aced Comp TIA A+

I've not heard of that type of drive nor its commonality, where could I look one up? (though I'm probably just going to google it now)
 
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