On 11/28/2005 at 2:00 PM Allison wrote:
Often they were used because WD could not supply or
was
not viewed as the desireable item due to lack of second
source (at least early on). Some did it to have a
propritory format.
Let's not forget that the 1771 early on was pretty darned expensive, too!
A USRT was almost always cheaper, particularly where software could be
brought to bear to issue timed step pulses, search for index/sector pulses,
etc. All USRTs AFAIK, can recognize sync characters embedded in an idle
bit stream, which doesn't make them too different from floppy controllers.
Cheers,
Chuck