[Coco] floppy drive question - only a little OT

[billg999 at cs.uofs.edu]

> I guess what confuses me is that the drive that is in there looks like a
> totally standard 3.5" floppy drive -- it even has the 4 pin connector
> for power, it is simply left unconnected.  Still, sounds like Tandy
> pulled a fast one on me and made sure that if I put in a standard drive
> for B: I'm going to get a small flash of light and a bad smell.  Back to
> the drawing board.
>

I doubt there was any ill will on Tandy's part.  I have run
in to a lot of systems that modify tings like disk drives
for their own personal use.  All the ST-506 drives that DEC
used in the PDP-11 were more than just re-badged with DEC
numbers, the boards frequently had wire-wrap wire soldered
all over the place modifying them in strange and undocumented
ways.  And just look at how many maufacturers removed the Drive
Select  jumpers because they assume a PC style twisted cable.

bill