External floppy drives on the Spectrum +3: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
Upper-case S in Spectrum
(Use double-prime and vulgar fraction symbols (3½″ and 3″, etc.))
(Upper-case S in Spectrum)
Line 48: Line 48:
To connect a normal PC floppy drive as "drive B:" to the +3 you need a 34 way ribbon cable with an IDC card edge connector at one end, and an IDC socket connector at the other.
To connect a normal PC floppy drive as "drive B:" to the +3 you need a 34 way ribbon cable with an IDC card edge connector at one end, and an IDC socket connector at the other.


Modern floppy drives don't provide the drive ready signal, so the {{overline|READY}} line needs shorting to ground to signal to the spectrum that the drive is ready (adding a switch here so you can manually toggle the signal on and off is a good idea otherwise the spectrum won't start up unless there's a disk in the drive).
Modern floppy drives don't provide the drive ready signal, so the {{overline|READY}} line needs shorting to ground to signal to the Spectrum that the drive is ready (adding a switch here so you can manually toggle the signal on and off is a good idea otherwise the Spectrum won't start up unless there's a disk in the drive).


=====Drive=====
=====Drive=====
Any modern 3½″ floppy drive will work as drive B: with the above proviso, you must create a ready signal for the spectrum otherwise it won't work.
Any modern 3½″ floppy drive will work as drive B: with the above proviso, you must create a ready signal for the Spectrum otherwise it won't work.
All modern drives are hard wired to appear as drive B: (hence the "twist" cable in a PC to make it appear as drive A:) so the cable is just a straight through wiring of all the signals.
All modern drives are hard wired to appear as drive B: (hence the "twist" cable in a PC to make it appear as drive A:) so the cable is just a straight through wiring of all the signals.


Line 77: Line 77:
To write individual files to a +3 formatted diskette (or dsk file) you can use [http://www.cpctech.org.uk/download/cpcxfs.zip cpcxfs]
To write individual files to a +3 formatted diskette (or dsk file) you can use [http://www.cpctech.org.uk/download/cpcxfs.zip cpcxfs]


[[category:hardware]]
[[category:Hardware]]
[[category:spectrum]]
[[category:Spectrum]]
[[Category:Floppy disk interfaces]]
[[Category:Floppy disk interfaces]]

Navigation menu