31 Oct
2001
31 Oct
'01
1:01 p.m.
Either you knew something about this allready and
forgot or are just darn
smart.
Years ago I had heard rumors of their being a way of running
CP/M on the drive itself with the onboard Z80 but I was never able to
get any concrete infomation on it and I never bothered to open one of
them up, since both of mine do work, to verify that they had a Z80 as
part of the controller.
The Indus GT disk drive was made for; of course the
Atari8bit, and I think
the Apple II and C64 machines.
Yes, those are the platforms that I recall seeing them for.
From the outside, they appeared identical to me other than the I/O
connectors.
Rana Systems became Indus which later became Future
Systems.
I didn't know that Rana and Indus were one and the same.
The Indus GT had a non-standard, belt-driven 1/2 height
mechanism.
Allmost all the electronics driving the mech were located on the Indus
controller board mounted beneath. The controller had it's OWN Z-80
processor and some ram. I think something like 2k. You could add a 64k
CP/M adapter card to a pinedge connector on the controller. I never saw
this board in person, but that it existed at least in proto form is
certain. Later Indus and Future systems GT's omitted the cp/m board
connector but the pads were still there. There was quite a bit of talk
about it back in the day. An Indus owner could get CP/M without having to
buy an ATR8000 to do it. I think the Indus CP/M module was going to cost
something like $149.00 - $199.00 vs a 64k ATR8000 at $400.00 plus.
That's pretty cool. Regardless of just how well it worked,
it'd be interesting to see it done at least once. I wonder if the
console I/O was directed to the screen I/O of the Atari 8bit?
Frankly, I think the Atari 810, and 1050 were the only
bulletproof drives
made for the Atari 8 bits.
The 810 I like, especially with the additional speed of the
Happy upgrade. Without it, the 810 certainly is a slow and noisy
beast! The 1050 I've never been a big fan of, though none of mine
ever got upgraded to true DD.
The only third-party Controller worth it's salt
I've owned (and still do)
is Bob Puff's FloppyBoard for the Black Box. It is the end-all-be-all
enhancement for the Atari 8-bit and is just as reliable as a 1050 while
being able to use 3.5" high-density mechs. Course anything Bob made or
sold was awesome.
Does Bob still do anything? Other than in conversations
about his older stuff, I've not heard his name mentioned in a while.
Jeff
--
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