Yep. the broken Cat already has the destroyed floppy drive. The working cat has a floppy in it that _cannot_ be ejected or that person will destroy that floppy. I have no idea if anyone has tried to eject it. It's perfectly useable with just leaving that floppy in there for now. -andy
On Oct 21, 2022, at 12:31 PM, Jonathan Gevaryahu via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Just remember: Before running a Canon cat at the museum, be SURE to replace the head rail holder inside the floppy drive.
The original piece which holds down the ?front? of the head rail (which the drive head carriage slides on) inside the cat's single-sided 3.5" floppy drive is made of delrin (plastic) instead of aluminum, and because it is under constant pressure to hold the rail in place, it cracks and eventually will break, freeing the head rail. If a disk is inserted and then attempted to be ejected when the head rail is loose, it will TEAR THE DRIVE HEAD OFF OF THE DRIVE head carriage, which is NOT REPAIRABLE.
So IMHO the Canon Cats should not be even used with a diskette until that preventative repair is made.
The canon cat drives are CUSTOM and cannot be replaced by a standard 3.5" drive without a LOT of extra work (they require the same 'true_ready' signal instead of 'disk_change' on pin 34 like Amiga machines do, plus they use a flexible flat cable instead of a standard 34-pin DIL floppy cable, so if the drive fails it requires a really complicated custom-made adapter to use a 34 pin drive anyway)
Also because the canon cat floppy format is so weird, you can't use a Gotek floppy emulator in place of it either!
So whoever in VCF takes care of setting these things up in the museum, please be aware of this before trying to use the cat. If the cat ever has a disk in it and it seems like it won't eject, DO NOT FORCE IT, the machine MUST be taken apart to prevent the drive from being destroyed!
It should be possible to make a replacement head rail holder piece using a small piece of aluminum or steel and a mill or drill press, from what I understand.
P.S. The canon cat uses a cr2032 watch battery inside, against the front edge of the mainboard, to back up the settings ram, and this needs to be replaced (or removed) as well.
On 10/21/2022 11:12 AM, Andrew Diller via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Yep, I donated my two Cats to VCF- after trying to use them for a few months.
Totally insane UI (and I hesitate to call it an _interface_). It's a good description to just call it a 'word processing computer that can't print (supports just like 3 specific models) and has bizarre keyboard chords to do anything.'
The article does a good job explaining the backstory but you can't comprehend how impossible the Cat is to actually use unless you sit down and try to do something a 5th grader can do on a Mac- like type and print a simple note. Also forget about networking.
Maybe VCF will get that Cat out on display at the museum at some point so visitors could see for themselves!
-andy
On Oct 21, 2022, at 9:33 AM, Christian Liendo via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
This is a new article about the Canon Cat and I know there are people who would be interested in this article and may have opinions
https://reproof.app/blog/on-designing-a-more-humane-computer
-- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu@gmail.com jgevaryahu@hotmail.com