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Old 19th Mar 2017, 5:32 pm   #4
TonyDuell
Dekatron
 
Join Date: Jun 2015
Location: Biggin Hill, London, UK.
Posts: 5,190
Default Re: Amstrad PPc512 and PPC640 luggable computers

I am pretty sure the 3.5" drive in this unit is direct-drive. I certainly don't remember a belt either in the unit or in the service manual (I have both).

The drive is a standard 720K 3.5" unit. Standard connectors. In fact the inside of the PPC (apart from the LCD driver) are very much what you find in the first series of desktop Amstrad PCs. I am pretty sure some of the gate arrays are identical, for example.

I still use mine. I have a single drive one, wth a DC37 socket in place of the second drive. I use it with a thing called a Microtest which is a specialised device for testing and aligning floppy drives. Useful if you have as many classic computers as I do. I never had the official PSU, so I made one (transformer, rectifier, smoothing capacitor). On the grounds I fitted primary and secondary fuses and it's in a diecast box it's probaby better than the original.
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