22 Apr
2010
22 Apr
'10
1:50 p.m.
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
I don;t know how early iyt came out (relative to the release of the
PCW), but there was an amstrad serial interface module which plugged into
the system bus.
The disk drive was standard -- a standard 3" unit (and the Amstrad PCW --
and Amstrad Z80 machines in general -- were not the only machines to use
that size disk). The disk cotnroler was, IIRC, a standard 765=, the disk
format was a normal-ish MFM one. I suyspect it would be very easy to link
an Amstrad 3" drive (or any other 3" drive -- some of the Hitachi ones
had a 34 pin edge connector with the stnadard pinout) to another machine
and write Amstrad disks on it.
Some to think of it, didn't the CPC6128 pre-date the PCW? It had an
external drive connector which IIRC was a standard 34 pin one. Was there
ever an external 3" srive unit for that machine? If so it would be very
easy to link to another machine.
-tony
If you have, for example, an Amstrad Joyce,
there's nowhere to send or
receive the data, as there is no (standard) extra port.
I know third-party serial ports, standard disk drives and so on were
widely available later in the PCW's life, but how was development done