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8" to 5.25" Adapter?

Chuck(G)

Chuck(G)

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There are tons of adapters to fit a 3½" drive in a 5¼" bay, but has anyone ever seen a 5¼" to 8" adapter (either full or half-height)?

I was thinking about it this morning, and drew a blank.
 
Chuck(G) said:
There are tons of adapters to fit a 3½" drive in a 5¼" bay, but has anyone ever seen a 5¼" to 8" adapter (either full or half-height)?

I was thinking about it this morning, and drew a blank.
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No, come to think of it, but it'd be a much smaller market and substantially more complicated re power and pinout, especially if the host didn't have a regulated 5 & 12V supply...

But who knows; maybe there's an opportunity for someone ;-)
 
Well, the 5V is easy--8" drive do use it also. A simple 3-terminal regulator would do for the +12 from the +24. The signal line swapping wouldn't be too bad and could be fabricated as a paddle board (the way it was on early 3½"adapters, some of which even had jumpers).

Just surprises me that I've never seen the beast. You'd have thought that there would have been a market for those.

It's also possible that 8" users knew that they had a very reliable medium and saw no reason to change.
 
I'm not familiar with the screw spacing of 8" drives. I haven't seen one either but yeah you would think that would have been something more often seen, especially with folks modding their Tandy's, etc.

Is an 8" drive really 8" for the mounting? Were they standard as far as screw spacings?
 
barythrin said:
I'm not familiar with the screw spacing of 8" drives. I haven't seen one either but yeah you would think that would have been something more often seen, especially with folks modding their Tandy's, etc.

Is an 8" drive really 8" for the mounting? Were they standard as far as screw spacings?
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8" drive is slightly larger than 8" across but most were set to a standard. DEC systems had external cases that were designed to fit into a 19" rack with 2 bays for 8" drives; the drives could be replaced with many other 8" drive models.

I recall (vaguely) that some terminal style computers were made with internal 8" drives and had later models that incorporated 5.25" drives but I don't know if those were new chassis in the same footprint or if there was an adapter included to handle the change in drive models.
 
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