You can just cut the pin. All pins on that row are GND anyway.

also true, but as a general principal don't mod things tgat arent easily replaced. Cables are cheap and easy to mod, drives and boards are not.

luckybob wrote:

canthearu wrote:

Just force the connector on, normally with a little force you can punch right through the blocked off pin on the cable. It is what I normally do.

Please don't do this. If you are in the situation ultra code mentioned, use a small drill bit to make the hole.

its not a disaster if you frack up a cable. if you break something on a drive or motherboard....

Why not, the floppy cables are a dime a dozen, worth absolutely nothing. The gotek floppy emulator is only worth slightly more.

Worse that can happen is that it pushes the pin into the drive connector. Just get a pair of pliers and pull it back out. If you somehow manage to break that pin, it is not used anyway.

Its the principal of the thing. if you are off a little bit, you might slip and bend over all the pins.

it is a risk/reward scenario.

If these were vulnerable pins or the device in any way special I'd agree, but in this case it's arguably a design oversight in the first place (keyed cables are common - for good reason - and there's no excuse for a modern device not to leave out the key), the cable is probably older than the Gotek, particularly if it also has edge connectors for 5.25" drive, and even if you squish the other pins all over the place, it''s easy enough to bend back or even re-solder.

That said, I wouldn't recommend trying to push soldered pins through. That exposes the PCB to all kinds of unnecessaty pressures. I'd just cut the offending pin on the modern device off...

canthearu wrote:

Just force the connector on, normally with a little force you can punch right through the blocked off pin on the cable. It is what I normally do.

😳

derSammler wrote:

You can just cut the pin. All pins on that row are GND anyway.

That way works. I carefully bend the pin until it breaks off cleanly.

Shocked by the responses on the pin thing. Just use a needle/paper board pin/anything similar to open the pin hole on the cable.

konc wrote:

Shocked by the responses on the pin thing. Just use a needle/paper board pin/anything similar to open the pin hole on the cable.

I had cables where the blocked pin was massive and not just a thin cover that you could open with a needle. You would need a hot needle or a driller for that. Much easier to just cut the unneeded pin.

I really,really wanted to grab this today since I was in Orlando over the weekend and this was only 70+ miles from Otown, but I just have too much on my plate right now. A beautiful specimen and a great price IMO. Looks like it has a memory issue and a HD issue from the post screen, but look at that beauty.

https://spacecoast.craigslist.org/sys/d/vinta … 6656614181.html

derSammler wrote:

konc wrote:

Shocked by the responses on the pin thing. Just use a needle/paper board pin/anything similar to open the pin hole on the cable.

I had cables where the blocked pin was massive and not just a thin cover that you could open with a needle. You would need a hot needle or a driller for that. Much easier to just cut the unneeded pin.

Sadly, the only floppy cable I currently have doesn't have that "missing pin" hole molded shut has a cover that sounds like what you described. Even after removing the top part of the cover with a box cutter, there was still more of it further in the hole that I couldn't remove. Since I'd rather not make any mods of any destructive nature to the Gotek emulator, I'll just wait till the new cables arrive.

Thanks for the responses, though, guys.

Now, about that corrosion on my AWE64 Gold... 😀

I got an IDE-mini IDE adapter recently that had the extra pin. It was kind of annoying. I did find a cable in the pile that had open pin holes, but the adapter is just plain made wrong, so I may still cut the pin off. For now I'm keeping that cable with the adapter.

It was just lazy design, as a result of lazily implemented standards.

Organized my Win3.1 desktop recently! 😁

I'm also trying to get over my AC filter capacitor fear with my Presario 425. It likely doesn't have a bad one, but I'm basically the younger equivalent of uxwbill. SMOKE TEST!!!

I'll get a screenshot of my awesome 3.1 desktop in here when I can - I'm just making this quick post from an old iBook G4 with TenFourFox. Oh, that's another thing - I set up and played Marble Blast Gold. Not exactly retro but it's fun 😉

I installed a 287 FPU into my 286:

https://youtu.be/aFJgufw8WOw

Autosketch now flies 😀 Nothing else seems to profit so far. Fractint is actually slower when switching to floating point algorithms... Well, maybe I will Excel and do some spreadsheets!

Trying to figure out why I can't get a video signal from any card in my PCI/AGP slots on my Dell XPS T450. The PC turns on, I can hear the HDD spinning just fine but I just cannot get a signal. I've tried 4 different cards and still nothing. I guess it's just had it so I'm scouring eBay to find parts for a new machine.

Received my new ISA multi-I/O card in the post today. And it really was new, shiny and never used, a little time capsule from 25 years ago. It also fully worked, which means that my all-UMC build is now back on again, and that the VLB multi-I/O card that I couldn't get the floppy controller to work on is simply dead - it's not compatibility as they use the same UMC 82C863F chip for the controller. Also installed DOS 6.22 and got the UM8009F NIC working.

In other news, figured out that one of the KVM 'octopus' cables somehow was making my A7N8X-X refuse to fully boot or spontaneously reboot during POST. Weird, as no other motherboards have an issue with that particular cable, but it was fully reproducible on this one. Then again, Asus' nForce2 boards are notoriously sensitive about everything. Half my DDR DIMMs here give errors on this board, while they work fine on other DDR boards. I remember when these things were new I had read about their RAM issues and chose a Gigabyte GA-7N400L instead. My housemate decided to follow the hype and get an A7N8X-E. We both had 2x 512MB DIMMs, quality stuff (mine were Infineon, his Kingston). His board was unstable as hell - turned out to be the RAM. It worked perfectly in my board. Fortunately mine worked perfectly in his as well, but this sort of nonsense was par for the course then and now.

Tested 5 of the SRAM chips with the EEPROM programmer (TL866CS/PLUS) I have for my 486 to make sure they aren't dead, and they all passed with flying colors. Now I need to find a Winbond 64kx1 22 pin 15ns SRAM chip or Cypress chip since the AT&T 64kx1 22 pin 15ns SRAM chip isn't compatible with my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus.

Pimped my PIII laptop with some RAM. This week, two modules of PC-100 RAM arrives, so I swap current 192 MB (128 + 64) for 512 MB (256 + 256) 😈

the_ultra_code wrote:

Sadly, the only floppy cable I currently have doesn't have that "missing pin" hole molded shut has a cover that sounds like what […]
Show full quote

derSammler wrote:

konc wrote:

Shocked by the responses on the pin thing. Just use a needle/paper board pin/anything similar to open the pin hole on the cable.

I had cables where the blocked pin was massive and not just a thin cover that you could open with a needle. You would need a hot needle or a driller for that. Much easier to just cut the unneeded pin.

Sadly, the only floppy cable I currently have doesn't have that "missing pin" hole molded shut has a cover that sounds like what you described. Even after removing the top part of the cover with a box cutter, there was still more of it further in the hole that I couldn't remove. Since I'd rather not make any mods of any destructive nature to the Gotek emulator, I'll just wait till the new cables arrive.

Thanks for the responses, though, guys.

Now, about that corrosion on my AWE64 Gold... 😀

Make a hole:

Use a paperclip, straighten it, use a lighter to heat the end of the paperclip. When hot just push it in the connector to make a hole.

kixs wrote:

Make a hole:

Use a paperclip, straighten it, use a lighter to heat the end of the paperclip. When hot just push it in the connector to make a hole.

Make sure to hold the paperclip with pliers, or be prepared to drop a glowing hot paperclip on the floor. 😀

root42... It's a paperclip and it's long. When heating one end the other doesn't get hot. I use this all the time since I don't know when. Paperclip should be the bigger one as the width of the pin matches it's width.

in other news... it took almost 10 days for SRAM package to arrive within EU... Tested the M919 SRAM module on the motherboard and... it works 😁 After 3-4 years of searching for it I finally found it for an acceptable price in a lot of 6 others made for Pentium boards.