15 Jan
2011
15 Jan
'11
9:49 a.m.
And it's old enoguh that the Beeb should have taken account of that
design .Perhaps it was just so obscure that nobody over here had come
across it (I certainly hadn't...)
I suppose the question is whether Acorn wanted just anyone connecting any old
drive to the BBC, or whether they'd rather you went out and bought an from that daft serial port connecotr, whcih was
mis-wired anyhow!). My
guessis that they would have prefered you to buy their own
drvie system,
but werne't goiing to stop you using whatever you liked...
My guess ithat buffered-seek drives were sufficiently uncommon that
either they'd not come caross them or thought the problem would almost
nver arise.
[...]
(are there documented cases of HH 5.25" drives
with buffered seek? I don't
think I've ever seen a FH drive used with a BBC machine)
Full height drives were ocmmon on Beebs. The original Acorn-badged drive
was a full-height 40 cylidner single-head thing. It was also unreliable.
I never got to see inside one, so I don't know who made the mechanism,
but it wasn't one of the common ones.
I've seen plenty of other full-height drive systems used on beebs too,
normally using Tandon TM100s (in one of their many versions) or similar.
-tony