Closed 3.5" Disk Drive for Acorn Electron or BBC

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Hi.
I am looking for a 3.5" Disk Drive for an Acorn Electron or BBC.
Preferably with its own power supply, although I could modify one without.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thanks,
 
Hi,

Assuming your beeb has a 1770 controller, you can hook up any standard 3.5" PC drive. If your beeb only has the older 8271 controller it's more difficult. A 3.5" drive won't work properly without modification.

For the Electron you would need a disc interface as well as the drive, none of which are particularly common. Which one to go for depends on whether you would prefer to use DFS or ADFS.
 
Yes, a disk interface for the Acorn Electron and a 3.5" drive is exactly what I'm looking for.
Thanks,
Gareth
 
The standard floppy drive for the Electron was the Acorn Plus 3. It's an all-in-one unit that connects to the expansion port on the back of the Electron. It also has a pass-though so you can still connect add-ons for joysticks, cartridges etc. It only supports ADFS format disks.

More Plus 3 info here.

If you have a Plus 1 or Slogger interface with cartridge slots you have a few more options.

The most popular were the PRES Advanced Plus 3 (ADFS) and Advanced Plus 4 (DFS). Both these carts have a spare ROM socket that can be used to upgrade the unit to support both filing systems.

The other popular choice was the Slogger Pegasus 400. It supports DFS by default but this also has a spare socket for adding ADFS.

All three carts can use a standard PC 3.5" drive.

More info:
PRES Advanced Plus 3
PRES Advanced Plus 4
Slogger Pegasus 400

Your best bet will probably be to look for an Acorn Plus 3. They are more common and the all-in-one design is a bit neater than having several loose parts. Make sure it comes with a power supply though. The standard Electron PSU isn't beefy enough to power the Plus 3.

Good luck!
 
Hi.
Yes, I think I'll look out for a Pres Plus 3 or Plus 4.
How often do these things turn up? I'll be monitoring eBay!
Thanks for your help,
Gareth
 
They don't turn up very often. In all my years on ebay I only remember seeing one AP4 and a couple of Pegasus 400 carts - one of which I snapped up :D

This thread over on the StarDot forums looks interesting. There may be some more 'new' Pegasus boards being made. Definitely worth a look.
 
Good spot!
One of these would be ideal.
I'm going to try and contact the guy to see if he has any left.

Thanks very much. Your help is greatly appreciated,
Gareth
 
Hey AgentX.

Just to let you know that I have been in contact with the guy that you mentioned and he is going to sort me out with a Pegasus disk interface.
He's a really nice chap actually, so thanks for that.

Can't wait to get it up and running,


Thanks again,
Gareth


AgentX, meant to ask. You're not the same guy over at WiiMC are you? I've contributed code towards that project.

---------- Post added at 03:57 ---------- Previous post was at 03:53 ----------

Moderators, could you please close this thread for me now as I have managed to secure a Cumana disk drive and a Pegasus disk interface.
Everything I needed. Thanks guys, great forum,
Gareth
 
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