9 Aug
2004
9 Aug
'04
11:50 a.m.
On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Tony Duell wrote:
What about controllers at a non-standard address
(Modern PC controllers
handle a maximum of 2 drives, but you'd probably want to have at least a
5.25" 40 cylinder (360K), a 5.25" 80 cylinder (probably a high density
one), a 3.5" 80 cylinder, mybe a 35." 40 cylinder (yes they do exist!),
The 3.5" 40 cylinder drives certainly exist.
They were available for the Epson Geneva PX-8 (3.5" DS 40 cyl)
Also, IIRC, the first "portable disk drive" for the Tandy 100 was
40 cylinder (but NOT MFM)
8"single sided, 8" double sided, 3"
single-head 'flippy' , 3" double head,
and maybe even things like 3.25".
The only machine that I've seen that came with a 3.25"
(not retrofitted later) was Seequa Chameleon 325.
Dysan bet the company on 3.25" and LOST. Most of the
really major software was available on 3.25", but not
computers that used them.
If you use software that accesses the drive at the BIOS level,
or below, then you can hook up a LOT of drives (2 at a time)
with a rotary switch on the drive select lines.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com