On Fri, 7 Jul 2006, Chuck Guzis wrote: I've been told (but can't personally verify), that it's 179x They sure screwed up that format, didn't they? The data is inverted relative to the address marks, the index address mark is often too early for an NEC (I often have to disable the index pulse to read them), the head numbers on the second side are often wrong, and I have no idea why the data address marks are flaky. And they called DSDD 48tpi "quad" density, which meant that when they came out with DSDD 96tpi, they called that "Super Density", and abbreviated it "SD"! (what is the next larger size of olives?) The good news is that it usually doesn't object to a properly formatted diskette, so it's often possible to format a stack of diskettes; use the SB to copy the files to them, and then bring those diskettes back to read. I tried to talk to Intertec about their formats. At NCC '83, some of their suits told me that they could not imagine ANY possible reason to convert data between disk formats, other than to steal their "proprietary" software (CP/M?), and that they would file a lawsuit if I included any SB formats in XenoCopy! That night was the first time that I ever added formats to XenoCopy in a hotel room. They never kept that promise. They used to have a sizable hobbyist following! -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

On Friday 07 July 2006 09:23 pm, Chuck Guzis wrote: I actually encountered a couple of those machines early on, but never did get a hold of any service data on them. From what I heard later on, though, they had _two_ z80 chips in there, one as the "main" processor and the other one to handle disk i/o. Maybe that has something to do with it? -- Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters" - Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James M Dakin