A Good Idea That Wasn’t
A few weeks ago I designed a right angle adapter PCB for the Floppy Emu. The idea was to make a little board that plugged into a standard Emu and converted it to right angle rear mounting, with the LCD and buttons facing outward, and the main board leaning against the back of the computer’s case. It’s possible to hack your Emu to do this, but I wanted a solution without needing to resolder or modify anything.
Unfortunately the geometry is wrong, and the adapter doesn’t fit. In order to plug into the computer’s floppy port, the DB-19 connector on the adapter board needs to extend about 1 cm behind the main Emu board. But as you can see in the photo, it doesn’t extend behind the main board at all. It’s not even close. So the main board just whacks into the Mac’s case and won’t let the adapter go any further.
I knew the geometry would be a problem even before I sent the adapter boards off to be made. I was hoping there would be enough flex or play in the connections that it would still fit, but no dice. Chalk this one up as a learning exercise!
Could you have that manufactured as a flexible PCB? I suppose that would be more expensive, though.
Neat idea. I think Elecrow can do flexible PCBs. When mounted on the computer, the main board is supposed to be held by the adapter board and extend vertically above it. With a flexible PCB, I think it would just flop over.
There are ways to fix this – a multi-level riser on the adapter board for the DB-19, for example. Or two PCBs joined at a right angle, so the DB-19 can be edge mounted. But it’s probably not worth the trouble, as most of my customers dislike the rear mount setup anyway. The hardware version that’s bundled with an extension cable is far more popular.
What if you switched the side of the boards the headers were on?
what ian said.
I missed this “I wanted a solution without needing to resolder or modify anything.”
Right, otherwise relocating the IDC-20 to the back of the main board would work well. I was hoping to make an easy to use adapter for people who’ve already got an Emu board.