since we were talking about hacking up cases, discussing mark benson's'siamese twinned quad mod, I've been thinking again about a question i conjectured about here, early in the year: the IIfx was built to hold two floppie drives on the 'drive balcony'. both of mine have only one floppie drive in them. is there any reason i couldn't modify the case and open a larger space where the left hand floppie drive is designed to go, and mount a low speed cd-rom unit there instead? would I just plug the usual 50 pin scsi flat ribbon cable and the 4 pin power supply plug into the logic board, same as the floppie was expected to be mounted? do i need to worry about IIfx termination? and if so, how would i handle it?
what is the difference between doing that, and mounting a cd rom reader out the back in an external scsi 50 pin case? i am wondering about the bus speed, how the logic board receives the data and processes it, and whether the floppie ports were designed to handle a differnt kind of data flow than a cd rom unit would be outputting into the board? i know one can also mount a second hard drive in that space, as well as mount it externally in a case just like i could an external cd-rom drive. it seems that a second hard drive would take the same innoccuuos steps, plugging in the 50 pin ribbon cable and the 4 pin power supply to the board. does the logic board care what is plugged into that 50 pin internal ribbon cable? do i assume that i can't use a faster cd rom unit, such as a 4x, 12x, or higher, in that space, for reasons of the IIfx bus speed? what's the corresspondence between the bus speed and the cd rom speed it can handle? if it would be ok to mount a 1x or 2x cd rom reader in that second floppie space, the way I have envisioned doing it, I'd like to know. I don't mind cutting into the case and making a cd bezel opening there. i think it would vastly improve the IIfx to have cd rom readers retrofitted in them. get technical with me if you want to. the more i comprehend, the better it makes me feel. i can follow just about anything. or i can study up more till i do. is there any reason i can't do this or ought'nt? or things to watch out for and absolutley sure of? janet http://community.webtv.net/mensabrains/BADCODE http://www.anybrowser.org -- Vintage Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Enter To Win A | -- Canon PowerShot Digital Cameras start at $299 | Free iBook! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Vintage Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/vintagemacs.shtml> The FAQ: <http://macfaq.org/> Send list messages to: <mailto:vintage.macs@;mail.maclaunch.com> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:vintage.macs-off@;mail.maclaunch.com> For digest mode, email: <mailto:vintage.macs-digest@;mail.maclaunch.com> Subscription questions: <mailto:listmom@;lowendmac.com> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/vintage.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
