30 May
2013
30 May
'13
1:31 p.m.
On 05/30/2013 01:35 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
Right... I aswas never realyl into S100 systems (actually, I was, and am
not, into CP/M elther, much prefereing LDOS as a Z80 OS).
I just like fiddling at the card (as well as component) level, I think; it
takes a bit of the fun out of it when everything's integrated onto one (or
two) PCBs.
Well, I did mean spare complete units - of course if one failed on me I'd
do what I could to repair it, but like you say there are a couple of ASICs
on there, and the heads aren't bomb-proof (I remember a bad Wabash disk
tearing the head in one of my 380Z systems right off its mounting once)
Aha, I found some photos; the Torch 725 seems to use 1/3H drives (which is
probably why I have/had a few) - they're push-button eject and I'm fairly
sure they're Epson, but the head positioning is via stepper. At least
they'd physically fit the QX-10, I suppose, but the eject buttons are all
black (and set a little more toward the middle than on the QX-10 units) and
so they would look a little different from the outside.
I thought I'd remembered them having two-tone eject buttons like the QX-10,
but it seems that (as you say) those are on [some of] the half-height
drives which Torch also used.
cheers
Jules
I regard the QX10 as being one of the best CP/M machines. It's quite
solid design.
I always think of it as a bit 'cute' - CP/M machines should be in big metal
crates with backplanes and separate boards for different functional areas! :-) From a
design point of view it does seem well thought out, though.
I suspoepct that spares are about as easy to obtain as for most floppy
drives :-(. Have you tried to order repalcement heads for any drive recently? And I _love_ those 1/3 height floppy drives (I
assuem
you've examined one, the head psoitoner is a voice coil with optical
feedback, like a miniature RK05 positioner.
Yes, they're wonderful little things, but I do worry about how robust they
might be (and how easy it is to obtain* spares should one die in some
horrible way). I am tempted to disconnect them and run the data cable - * I'm not
sure if the 1/3 height drives that Torch used in some of their
systems are the same - if they are, I possibly still have some of those in
overseas storage.
The drives in the XXX, Graduate, etc are Epson, but they're half-height
and use a stepper motor to move the heads. They also ahve a direct-drive
spindle IITC. There are schematics for them in my XXX diagrams if I gave
you a set of those. But I don;t think any non-triivla parts exchange with
the drives in the QX10