7 Nov
2001
7 Nov
'01
10:07 p.m.
On Wed, 7 Nov 2001, Allison wrote:
1- Drives (SA400 was pure garbage!!!)
2- horribly botched controllers (TRS-80 without mods)
3- software such as disk drivers that would hang if no media or errors
4- floppy drives/controlers that would "bite" the media on power up or
down meaning it would write trash due to no write locks.
5- not enough space
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)
Most software I used on the Apple ][ would not hang on a disk error. I
only experienced that problem with certain games that had no provision for
disk errors. Only very poorly written software would not recover properly
from disk errors, but this is a bad software design
issue, and not a
hardware issue.
As for having media in the drive upon power up, I learned early on from my
cousin not to leave disks engaged in the drive at power up. In the very
least I always opened the drive door before turning the machine on. Even
if I was lazy, I rarely got bit by that issue.
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org