The floppy disk connector on the back is a female 36-pin micro-ribbon connector, also known as a "Centronics" connector, similar to printer and SCSI drive connectors from the 1980s. That Wikipedia link shows the male and female connectors, and a picture of the female connector on the computer is attached to this post.
Unfortunately, I have so far been unable to find a pinout for that connector. Given the number of pins, I'm guessing that it's moderately likely that they're directly running Shugart's 34-pin SA-400 interface through that connector. I have an oscilloscope; if you have suggestions for me about how to reverse-engineer the interface I'll happily take them.
I'd like to use an HxC Floppy Emulator with this machine, both for N-BASIC and to run CP/M. So I have the following questions:
- Does anybody know what the pinout would be for the 36-pin micro-ribbon connector, or know anybody who makes/sells cables for it? (I'd prefer to make my own cable, as I have the parts for this, but I can buy one to reverse-engineer the pinout if that's absolutely necessary.)
- Has anybody already used an HxC with this or any other PC-8001-series machine?
- Is the disk format the same as the PC-8801 and/or PC-6601, both of which are on the HxC supported computers list? (The PC-8801 was the 16-bit series that followed on from the PC-8001 series, and the PC-6601 series was similar to the PC-8001 series but cheaper and with arguably better graphics.)