7 Nov
2001
7 Nov
'01
6:53 a.m.
Eric Chomko wrote:
Allison wrote:
> General comment,
> Most 8" systems were expected be and behaved reliably and have
> at least 250k of space.
I used a home brew CP/M system with 8 inch drives once or twice.
Every so often the drive head would stick so you rapped the drive.
Mind you if you rapped too hard a something lose in the computer
would reset the machine.:(
> 2- horribly botched controllers (TRS-80
without mods)
Don't forget to put some blame on the Floppy disk chip manufacture
as
the internal
data separator was unreliable on the most common chip, but they still
sold the chip.
> The apple-II was plagued with #1 and somewhat
with #3 depending on
> OS and definately #4. Space was a problem for many users(#5)
Not a problem since you were expected to use basic and run games.
My SSB system was SS/SD soft-sector and had a whopping
80KB storage
capacity per diskette. Didn't TRS-80, Apple II, Northstar and others ALL have
a different scheme (i.e. more capacity, hard-sectoring, double sided/density)?
I think the coco was 160K, but I do remember OS/9 would handle bigger
drives.
To bad RS did not market a real puter for OS/9 with a HD and real
keyboard
and a REAL UART!
And the fact that the 1.44MB floppy is STILL a
standard device on many
systems to this very day.
But they are not useful as very few OS's now days fit on a floppy.
Ben Franchuk.
--
Standard Disclaimer : 97% speculation 2% bad grammar 1% facts.
"Pre-historic Cpu's" http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk