11 Dec
2005
11 Dec
'05
10:33 a.m.
On Sun, December 11, 2005 10:56 am, Jules Richardson said:
Did Sinclair use them purely because Amstrad had taken them over (or were
about to) and Amstrad forced them to use that drive? I remember magazine
articles around the +3 launch complaining that it didn't have a 3.5"
drive.
I think so. The 3.5" drive was too expensive at that point, though it
didn't stop the likes of Opus producing the Discovery for the Spectrum - a
disk unit that was more expensive than the machine it fastened to!
The other possibility is that there wasn't room in
the case for a bigger
drive
whilst keeping it the same footprint / style as the +2 :-)
What's half an inch between friends? :)
Actually, I'd followed Sinclair up to that point -
it was the fact that
the +3
had a 'funny' drive which put me off getting one; I held out with my +2
for a
bit longer and ended up getting an Amiga...
I'd stopped using any machine at all 'cos I'd got bored with my Spectrum
and Grandstand cartridge system and couldn't afford to get anything else.
I managed to get myself an Amiga at cost price once I'd started work
though, 1987-ish. I think that's where the rot started setting in and I
lost interest in writing things for the machine and concentrated on
playing games!
--
adrian/witchy
Binary Dinosaurs creator/curator
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the UKs biggest home computer collection?