FloppyPUter was re:Hard-sector 51/4 disk

If they aren't then I'm an idiot. The Rana cover fits the indus like a glove and vice-versa. They are so similar it isn't possible for two different companies to have made them unless it was the same engineering team. I know for sure that Indus became Future, but it was surmise that Rana became Indus. The console was intended to be the Atari using a Bit3 font ala the ATR's ADM3a Atari terminal emulator software. The ATR didn't need an atari, it could use a serial terminal, but I've never hooked one to my ATR's to find out. There was a special cable to use the SIO jacks on the ATR connected to a serial dumb terminal. Otherwise you had to use the only other serial port on the thing and lose the ability to run a modem. The 1050 was an even better drive than the 810. Quieter, just as bulletproof, and faster because of onboard data separator etc. It also used a modified MFM scheme to store more data while still using 128byte sectors called 'Enhanced Density'. ED was a 26spt scheme no one really liked much. Really the drive was a Double Density drive lobotomized to save a couple bucks in onboard RAM. ICD produced the US Doubler which was a Rom with a ram replacement. Very easy to install and the drive was instantly a true DD machine. Reliability was NOT compromised at all. My prize 1050 has the SuperArchiver II with Bitwriter installed. This doesn't affect reliability either! It will copy a paper plate if you want it to..... For those not in the know, the Sarchiver is a hardware option that will copy just about any copy protected disk out there. Duplicate sectors, Long sectors, Short sectors, Phantom sectors, fuzzy sectors, duplicate tracks, long tracks...... It could also vary the drive's rotation speed to aid it in reading/writing these sectors. The BITWRITER hardware option comes in when all else fails and is generally used to copy only those portions of the disk that other methods could not. The Bitwriter does an analogue bit-for-bit copy. Because it is analogue, whole disk copies using this method may not allways work. I spoke with him a few months ago. The CSS bbs was still up and running and Black Box's, SuperEburner, and other products were still available. Rtime8's are getting scarce as are some other gear. MIO can't be had for love or money, but the Black Box has more features by far. The only thing the MIO had that wasn't in the BB was RAM. That 1mb external ramdisk was pretty cool.... But my xe's have 512k ramdisks anyway so I don't miss it. I ran a modified Carina II bbs system off that ramdisk for years. All the modules in ram made it alot faster. Data went to hard disk. CSS (Computer Software Services) is now known as New Life Electronics (http://www.nleaudio.com). Bob has allways made hifi stuff. A catalogue, information, docs, source, and other such is on the site. To this day Bob is STILL an Atari hacker. Something of a god he is to me. -- ----------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey S. Worley Asheville, NC USA 828-6984887 UberTechnoid(a)Home.com -----------------------------------------------------------