It was only a matter of time before I came up with the idea of making some double 3½" floppy disc drives for your Beeb!

These are two brand-new Sony MPF920 3½" floppy disc drives, permanently fixed together with the top drive set as drive 0 and the bottom drive as drive 1. I have made a hardware modification to the top drive to make it work correctly as drive 0 when connected up to a BBC micro. The dual drives are fitted with a correctly made-up 34-way ribbon cable for connecting to the disc drive port underneath your Beeb, as well as a BBC dual disc drive power cable for plugging into the auxilary power supply of the BBC.

These dual drives are a must for anyone who has spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to connect two drives together, only to get both drive lights coming on at the same time or disc errors all over the shop. Yes, once again, BeebMaster has done all the hard work for you!

These drives are suitable for use with BBC Master series machines as well as BBC Model B and B+ computers with a 1770 disc interface. Unfortunately they are not guaranteed to work with BBC micros with the 8271 disc interface as the older disc controller experiences timing problems when using 3½" disc drives.

A modification to the BBC Model B DFS which solves many of the problems experienced when using the 8271 controller with 3½" disc drives is available widely on the internet and I will supply a DNFS 1.21 ROM to anyone intending to use these drives with an 8271 BBC B - just ask when ordering!

The drives are High Density 1.44MB drives with automatic density detection. This means that the drives will work correctly with Double Density (720K) floppy discs but will not work on the BBC with High Density (1.44MB) discs as the data transfer rate associated with HD discs is too fast for the BBC to understand.

I supply these units as the two drives fixed together, with data ribbon cable and auxilary power cable. They are not supplied with any additional casing, but as you can see from the pictures, they can be used without the need to be mounted inside any other housing as the existing drive casing offers sufficient protection from the drive internal workings.

These dual drives are now supplied and fitted with a bespoke power cable which can be seen in this picture. This cable connects to the BBC's auxiliary power connector and supersedes the modular cable supplied previously.

For all enquiries, please contact me at Enquiries@BeebShop.co.uk

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