Flippy-Floppy Video REVIEW

[JDW]

In August 2022, @Kay K.M.Mods created what I consider an OUTSTANDING upgrade for the Color Classic MYSTIC called: FLIPPY FLOPPY.

I'm a big-time FloppyEMU user. It always frustrated me to my core when I reflected on how my otherwise great MYSTIC doesn't have an external floppy drive port on back! But when Kay Koba released his Flippy Floppy kit, I suddenly found myself in digital heaven! With Kay's Flippy Floppy, it was love at first sight. I could now connect a FloppyEMU to my MYSTIC!

Tragically , I soon discovered the kit was NOT COMPATIBLE with add-on Cards like my Apple IIe Card (or Ethernet cards) due to the design of the kit's BACK PANEL. That was the lone reason I had to leave that beautiful kit sitting on my TO DO table for many months, collecting dust.

But then a couple months ago, I was talking about the Flippy Floppy kit with a fellow vintage Macintosh enthusiast and supporter of my YouTube channel, Frank Conforti. Frank also happened to own the Flippy Floppy kit. When I mentioned the back panel incompatibility problem with add-on CARDS, Frank jumped at the chance to resolve that problem by creating his own back panel. Frank then decided to make his work freely downloadable to everyone (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED) via Printables.com.

Frank's incredible CAD design and 3D printing work enabled me to finally install that fantastic Flippy Floppy kit I had been itching to install for 1.5 years! That's great news for every other MYSTIC owner out there too, because I suspect a good number of you out there are like me and have cards installed on your LC575 motherboard.

Below is my VIDEO overview of the Flippy Floppy kit, showing complete installation and testing.

(Please expand the TEXT DESCRIPTION under the video on YouTube for links to the Flippy Floppy and the download link to Frank's back panel.)

I humbly wish to thank Kay Koba for having created the kit, and thank Frank Conforti for improving it.

With fantastic products like this at our disposal, there's never been a better time to enjoy the vintage Mac hobby to its fullest. Kudos to the great folks who keep these extremely useful gadgets coming our way! I also wish to say, NEVER LOSE HOPE! When there's room for improvement, it's wonderful when we work together in friendship to solve problems and enhance the fun for everyone.

 

[andrew]

I did something similar with my Lisa 2/10. It's effectively the same thing as this kit, but for a computer released right before the DB-19 port was introduced, instead of for one released right after.

I have a BMOW Floppy A/B switch velcro-ed into the drive cage:

One output goes to the internal floppy, and the other is routed to the expansion card area via the air vents under the drive cage. I (very carefully) used some jumper wires so things would actually fit through the hole:

The cabling then continues out the back through an expansion card slot with a port hole:

The exact cables are a 20-pin IDC F/M cable, then 20 12" F/M jumper wires, then another 20-pin F/M. At that point you're all set. You can plug the Femu into the back with its included ribbon cable:

Now you can route things around the machine however you'd like. Swapping between the built-in drive and the floppy emu involves powering off the Lisa, removing the front panel, and flipping the switch. You already have do this to change the settings on an X/Profile adapter anyway, so from a usability perspective I'd say this is fine.

The best thing to do now would be to attach some sort of IDC-20 to Female DB-19 adapter to the inside of the slot cover to make things look neat and professional. (It would also let you test using an external floppy drive with the Lisa) BMOW has one such adapter, but the store page says it's specifically designed only for use with Steve's Yellowstone disk controller, so I'll need to find something else.

I'm sure some enterprising soul could come up with a kit for this if they really wanted to. Maybe give me some royalties from the sales, lol

 

[JDW]

Pretty incredible. Thank you for sharing that, @andrew !