★ HARDWARE ★ LECTEURS DE DISQUETTES ★ The InterGem interface will save you money|Popular Computing Weekly) ★ |
| InterGem interface Micro Amstrad PCW | Hardware Lecteurs De Disquettes |
But, as John Lettice discovered, it may take some time Once upon a time practically all real microcomputers used 5¼ inch disc drives, and practically all real microcomputer users deplored the fact. Your 5¼ inch disc, they said, was floppy (hence the name), large and susceptible to damage. The smart money was on disc standards changing over to 3 or 3½ Inch, both of which were sturdier, and had the added advantage of being able to fit into a shirt pocket. Those of us who , being minus shirt pockets, concluded that the future belonged to people clad in safari suits, and began stockpiling 5¼ inch discs, can now breathe again Amstrad discs are currently so hugely expensive that it could make sense to fit a 5¼ inch drive to your PCW. and instead of spending £4 for a 3 inch disc you could spend £1 for a 5¼ inch disc. It's cheaper in the long run. and while it's arguably not cheaper in the short run it's also cheaper in the medium run "InterGem is basically a small piece of circuitry" Bearing in mind the inexplicable failure of the all-powerful Amstrad to bring down the price of its discs to the level everybody else's discs sell at it was clearly only a matter of time before someone took steps to attach the Amstrad PCW to those ridiculous. vulnerable, antiquated and cheap 5¼ inch drives. Gemini's InterGem interface is an attempt to do this, and takes the tried and tested path of twiddling the PCW's electronics around to the extent that it will accept BBC standard 5¼ inch drives. InterGem is basically a small piece of circuitry designed to fit into the spare drive slot of the PCW 8256. It could be fitted to an 8512. but as it fits into the area occupied by the second drive this would be an expensive way of using it. It comes in the form of a small circuit board designed to fit into the second drive slot, with the interface socket projecting out where the drive would normally be. Gemini recommends that it be fitted by an engineer, but the procedure is fairly straightforward and it's therefore feasible to fit it provided you're fairly DIY minded Following the installations manual, the first step is to take the back off the PCW. Once you've done this you need to cut through the six small plastic lugs holding the second drive cover in place, leaving a slot for the interface. A small hacksaw blade seems best for this job. With the slot exposed the next step is to slide the interface into position from the front, then secure it Doing the latter involves twiddling with screws and fixing plates, and requires something like six pairs of hands and a team of Fantastic Voyage style pixies - tricky, but it can be done. "It will operate like a PCW second drive " Once you've got this far you realise your mistake, as the manual tells you to fix the cables from the inside of the PCW to the interface, and of course now the interface is fixed you can't see where the cables go But after dismantling the whole shebang, cursing Gemini and attaching the cables your creation should be complete The completed edifice looks pretty much like a PCW, apart from the strange sockets emanating from the second drive slot. This consists of a connector for the ribbon cable leading to the drive and a power output capable of taking a plug for a standard BBC drive. The unit can cope either with this or with a BBC style drive with external power supply (the type used in this test) The interface can also deal with both 40 and 80 track BBC drives, although 40 track drives cannot be used with Locoscript or 80 track disc formats. Once it's up and running it will operate just like a PCW second drive, but has the added frill of allowing you to transfer data between MSDOS (IBM PC), Concurrent CP/M, CP/M, CP/M 86 and BBC machines and the PCW. The utility disc included with the interface includes an impressive list of machines catered for. including obscurities like the Lynx. Einstein. DEC Rainbow and ICL machines too bizarre to mention. Obviously it wasn't possible to test this range, but those that won't work straight off should go with a little tweaking. InterGem should also be able to deal with 5¼ inch CP/M programs straight off drive B, widening the PCW's software base to the less popular CP/M packages (which are only available on 51 inch disc) and to public domain software. Overall the interface and the disc drive to go with it is a substantial Investment, but assuming the price of 3 inch discs isn't going to drop in the near future (have you ever detected a kindly smile on Alan Sugar's face?) it should, in the long run, prove to be a money saver. Well worth thinking about.
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