Good luck finding hard sectored floppies! Although I am well aware of their existence, in 40+ years of using computers I don't recall ever seeing one "in the flesh". Clean rooms are not required for floppies - 5.25" disks have the disk surfaces open to the elements through the head access hole, the index hole and the clamping ring hole! Having said that, hand punching index holes is a fools errand. I hope that you find someone who can supply you with a few 👍🙂
Wow that full system with 4 floppy drives would have cost a small fortune back in the day heh! btw, if you are running CP/M it's kind of _compulsory_ to run Zork ;-)
Building a jig that holds an entire floppy disk including the sleeve and turns the disk itself in a controlled manner so you can punch holes through the existing cutout does not seem overly complex. A 3D printer would help.
You could punch your own if you use a 3D printer to make a jig with all 10 holes located on the top section and that should be accurate. You would make a top and bottom section and they should align perfectly. Put a locating pin through the existing single hole. Then just punch the holes through the outer cover without rotating the disk media. So punch a hole and leave a locating pin in place through the hole and keep going punching holes where the top 3D printed plate has holes in them and at the end you should have all 10 holes with locating pins through them all aligned perfectly with the 3D printed jig. After that you could remove the media and put it into a new sleeve and use that punched sleeve to do more punching. Obviously do all of that wearing some latex gloves so you don't mess up the media handling it.
I can tell you exactly what happens if you put the power DIN-5 plug in the video DIN-5 connector. NOTHING happens, they made the plug wiring so that mistakingly plugging in the power plug in any of the other two din receptacles would have NO damaging effect. The ZX-81 also has three identical plugs, And there also switching plugs has no damaging effects. So maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to use three identical connectors, but swapping the connectors doesn't have the effect you assumed it had. the designers were not THAT stupid! Not that there two boards do not make the TRS-80 model one into a (well useable) CP/M machine because those have an 80 columns by 25 line displays to support software like wordstar, the TRS-80 model 1 only has 64 columns and 16 lines, which doesn't support most CP/M programs. There are some TRS-80 model one clones, like the lobo, and the Aster CT-80, which do support CP/M with an 80 x 25 display and a large transient (TPA) memory area. larger than the 48K this solution supports. Good luck finding hard sectored 5 1/4 " floppies, they are rarer than hen't teeth.
Good luck finding hard sectored floppies! Although I am well aware of their existence, in 40+ years of using computers I don't recall ever seeing one "in the flesh". Clean rooms are not required for floppies - 5.25" disks have the disk surfaces open to the elements through the head access hole, the index hole and the clamping ring hole! Having said that, hand punching index holes is a fools errand. I hope that you find someone who can supply you with a few 👍🙂
So far no dice, but miracles do happen sometime,
Wow that full system with 4 floppy drives would have cost a small fortune back in the day heh! btw, if you are running CP/M it's kind of _compulsory_ to run Zork ;-)
Just being able to use PIP warms my heart
Building a jig that holds an entire floppy disk including the sleeve and turns the disk itself in a controlled manner so you can punch holes through the existing cutout does not seem overly complex. A 3D printer would help.
Send me your design sketches.
You could punch your own if you use a 3D printer to make a jig with all 10 holes located on the top section and that should be accurate. You would make a top and bottom section and they should align perfectly. Put a locating pin through the existing single hole. Then just punch the holes through the outer cover without rotating the disk media. So punch a hole and leave a locating pin in place through the hole and keep going punching holes where the top 3D printed plate has holes in them and at the end you should have all 10 holes with locating pins through them all aligned perfectly with the 3D printed jig. After that you could remove the media and put it into a new sleeve and use that punched sleeve to do more punching. Obviously do all of that wearing some latex gloves so you don't mess up the media handling it.
CuriousMarc may be able to help you wrt 5.25" floppies.
I can tell you exactly what happens if you put the power DIN-5 plug in the video DIN-5 connector. NOTHING happens, they made the plug wiring so that mistakingly plugging in the power plug in any of the other two din receptacles would have NO damaging effect. The ZX-81 also has three identical plugs, And there also switching plugs has no damaging effects. So maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to use three identical connectors, but swapping the connectors doesn't have the effect you assumed it had. the designers were not THAT stupid!
Not that there two boards do not make the TRS-80 model one into a (well useable) CP/M machine because those have an 80 columns by 25 line displays to support software like wordstar, the TRS-80 model 1 only has 64 columns and 16 lines, which doesn't support most CP/M programs. There are some TRS-80 model one clones, like the lobo, and the Aster CT-80, which do support CP/M with an 80 x 25 display and a large transient (TPA) memory area. larger than the 48K this solution supports. Good luck finding hard sectored 5 1/4 " floppies, they are rarer than hen't teeth.