vertically-mounted floppies

[Mark Dapoz]

In article <1990May25.184349.24830 at cbnewsj.att.com> dwex at cbnewsj.att.com (david.e.wexelblat) writes:
>What is peoples' opinion of vertically-mounted floppy drives these days?
>In days of yore, most drives were vertical, but for the last 10 years or so,
>all floppies I have seen have been mounted horizontally.

For those of you that were at the 3b1 BOF at the last usenix, you probably
saw the case I designed for my 3b1.  In my case, I mounted the drives (a 5.25"
and 3.5") vertically in it.  Personally, I think drives are much easier to use 
when mounted vertcially since I don't have to twist my hand as much when 
inserting the disk.  Either that or I'm just used to it from my 'ole CP/M
days when almost all the systems had disks mounted vertically (I skipped the
DOS era so I was never forced to change :-).

>The reason I am asking is that I am planning on adding a 3.5" drive to my
>3b1.  Jameco sells a cabinet, with power supply and cabling, for 2 half-height
>drives (mounted vertically).  I was thinking about putting the existing
>5.25" and the new 3.5" drive in the same cabinet, and mounting the drive-select
>switch on the cabinet.

Sounds like a good idea but what are you going to do with the empty slot where
the 5.25" drive used to be?  You may also want to put the drive select switch 
in the plastic panel of the 5.25" drive, that's what I did.  This way you
can flip it one way for the 5.25" and the other way for the 3.5".
-- 
Managing a software development team 	|   Mark Dapoz  
is a lot like being on the psychiatric	|   mdapoz%hybrid at cs.toronto.edu
ward.  -Mitch Kapor, San Jose Mercury	|   ...uunet!mnetor!hybrid!mdapoz