Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday October 23 2019, @02:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the obsolete-no-more dept.

https://www.bigmessowires.com/2016/06/04/db-19-resurrecting-an-obsolete-connector/

This is a happy story about the power of global communication and manufacturing resources in today's world. If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, then you've certainly heard me whine and moan about how impossible it is to find the obscure DB-19 disk connector used on vintage Macintosh and Apple II computers (and some NeXT and Atari computers too). Nobody has made these connectors for decades.

I've got a disk emulator product called Floppy Emu that attaches to an Apple DB-19 port, so I need a steady supply of these connectors to build my hardware, and that's a problem. Over the past couple of years, I've scrounged what seems like every warehouse and basement on the planet, and bought up nearly the entire world's remaining supply of new-old-stock DB-19 connectors. My last few product batches included DB-19s from some very obscure international sources. It was clear I'd reached the end of the road.

This wasn't a surprise. The DB-19 shortage first became obvious to me about a year and a half ago, when a manufacturing error forced me to replace all the DB-19 connectors in a batch of boards, and replacements couldn't be readily found. Since then I've written a dozen times about the impending DB-19 doomsday. I also made severalattempts to design a DB-19 substitute using a small PCB and suitably-arranged header pins, but while they more-or-less worked, I wasn't satisfied with the result.

[...] But just as I was getting discouraged, good luck arrived in the form of several other people who were also interested in DB-19 connectors! The NeXT and Atari communities were also suffering from a DB-19 shortage, as well as others in the vintage Apple community, and at least one electronics parts supplier too. After more than a year of struggling to make manufacturing work economically, I was able to arrange a "group buy" in less than a week. Now let's do this thing!

[...] Two months passed, and a round of prototyping. Progress was slow but steady, and I received updates from the manufacturer every few days. I kept waiting, eagerly anticipating this DB-19 bounty. At the end of May the product finally shipped, only to disappear into a US Customs black hole somewhere for a couple of days. Then at long last, after what felt like an infinite wait, I came home to find 10000 of these beauties stacked on my doorstep[!]


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:34PM (4 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:34PM (#910823) Journal

    I have an Apple II+, which uses a ribbon cable with an insulation piercing connector (IPC) as they were sometimes called, that connects to a double row of pins on the floppy disk expansion card. The cable passes through one of the openings in the back of the case. There is no DB-19 connector.

    As I recall, the DB-19 seemed a fancy pants sort of connector that added more cost than value. Lets you connect and disconnect the floppy drive, which was external obviously, without opening the case, as if opening the case was such a big deal and you connected and disconnected floppy drives regularly.

    Moving the floppy drive inside the case made the whole issue moot. The Apple II design was backwards that way. The keyboard was built in, but the floppy drive was external. Spill a Coke on an Apple II keyboard, and you've spilled on the computer, and will be lucky if it doesn't fry. Likewise with a Commodore 64, and quite a few other home computers from that era. Now of course, the floppy drive itself is pretty much gone.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 1) by Grayson on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:59PM (1 child)

    by Grayson (5696) on Wednesday October 23 2019, @03:59PM (#910836)

    I don't remember the DB-19 becoming standard till the Apple //e which would have been post Apple ][+.

    My Apple //e (post IIGS upgrade kit) used DB-19 to connect a DuoDisk.
    The thing was a real screamer for someone who couldn't afford a Mac.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:32PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:32PM (#911018)

      Yes, the DB-19 was introduced with the Duodisk (and also used on the Unidisk that followed shortly after). The later //gs drives used the same connector, as did many early Macs.

      The 5.25" drives all used basically the same electronics. The only difference was the connector and the appearance. The Duodisk was actually two Disk ][ mechanisms in one enclosure, with a single cable, which was possible because there was a drive select pin on the Disk ][ pin header even though it had two separate connectors for the single drives that were common on the early ][s. The drive select signal was decoded in the Duodisk.

      Similar concepts were used on the //gs with its unusual daisy-chain disk arrangement. The 3.5" drives spoke a binary protocol, whereas the 5.25" drives had only the various direct control signals. The 3.5" drives would listen to what the computer was doing, then pass the signal down the chain if it seemed to be for a 5.25" disk. This meant 5.25" disks have to be at the end of the chain, although you could still have two of them due to the drive interpreting the drive select signal based on whether there was another disk connected downstream. But most //gs owners had only one 5.25" drive. You could connect a Duodisk if you had one, or even use old-style Disk ][ drives with a controller card in a slot. The //gs ROM would figure out what was going on and connect the right device to the software. It was a very well designed computer.

      3.5" drives on the other hand, while also mostly using the DB-19 connector, are instead a maze of mostly-incompatible devices that are mostly specific to the system they shipped with, and (except the 1.44MB Superdrive, standard on Mac SE and later, and available but very expensive for the Apple //) couldn't even read each other's disks most of the time due to differing physical disk formats, even in disks of the same capacity.

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday October 23 2019, @04:03PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday October 23 2019, @04:03PM (#910838)

    Yes, often called IDC- Insulation Displacement Connector. Often flaky. I fixed many computers by pressing the 40 and 80 pin IDE hard disk connectors (and SCSI). Often with brand new cables you could see a gap between the connector body and the ribbon cable. Was never properly pressed at factory- rushed through. If you don't have an official press, you can do it carefully with pliers or preferably with a small vice. Don't kill it, but squeeze out the gap, then a bit more.

    BTW, my fix for odd connector problems has often been: replace it with a more common one; in this case a DB-25.

  • (Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday October 23 2019, @04:13PM

    by theluggage (1797) on Wednesday October 23 2019, @04:13PM (#910852)

    The keyboard was built in, but the floppy drive was external.

    In 1979, the floppy drive and controller cost half as much again as the rest of the computer*. Non-rich people made do with cassette tape. Having a built-in keyboard (and video interface) was a bit of a luxury. Having a built-in floppy drive would have been a deal-breaker.

    (*Practical Computing, Feb 1980: Apple II Europlus 16K: £750; Disc drive with controller: £398 and those are 1980 £s. For US prices replace '£' with '$' : Yes, the £1 was around $2 in those days and, no, in 1980 UK computer prices didn't include VAT - US computers really did cost "twice" as much in the UK... but so did most things).