TRS-80 Model I

4 Feb 2007

...
   required 100%
attention from the CPU.  On most other computers that 
 used dedicated LSI controllers, the possibility existed for 
 overlapped computation/disk access.  
 Like when?
 I can't think of any small computer or PC that does that? 
I thought every PC (maaning IBM compatible) did that. The floppy system 
in the PC. XT and ZT has a DMA channel associated with it. You ask it to 
read some secotyors from the current track, it does so and transfers the 
data into memory, then gives you an iterrupt when it's done. 

I know for a fact that other tasks carry on running on this (slow) linux 
machine when it's doing floppy drive operations.

-tony

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TRS-80 Model I