6 Jan
2013
6 Jan
'13
4:23 p.m.
Dave wrote:
not as clever as Woz's interface, but since OSI
had less cloud with drive manufacturers than apple,
I don't think Apple had any clout whatsoever with drive manufacturers in
early 1978. What, some new fruit company in California? If anything,
Ohio Scientific had more clout with drive manufacturers, as they had
already been buying floppy drives since late 1976 and hard drives since
early 1977. (Apple didn't introduce a hard drive until late 1981.)
I imagine that by mid-1979 Apple was buying at least an order of
magnitude more floppy drives than Ohio Scientific, but it didn't start
out that way.
it was a win to be able to use a standard drive.
There's nothing that precludes using a clever controller design such as
Woz' Disk II controller with a standard drive. Apple using an SA390
rather than an SA400 was a cost reduction, but the basic Woz controller
concept can work fine with standard drives.
Also, I don't think there's any reason to think that Shugart wouldn't
have sold the SA390 to any OEM customer.
Eric