Coleco Adam

From: Allison J Parent <allisonp_at_world.std.com>
Date: Wed Dec 24 20:37:21 1997

<that a PC drive could eat its children before 360k became standard. I
<don't know enough about head technology, though I assume that the head

It's littly to do heads ot specific systems. *ALL* drive before the
3.5" sony standard were capable of the dasterdly deed.

Reason, the line known as write enable not. This is an active
low(ground) line and when power went you had the head in contact,
some power and a command to write a logical transistion at that point...
BANZAI!!! Some systems were better in they would lock out write commands
if power were failing (assuming both used the same power.). My NS* has
such a mod and it's allowed me to avoid early bit disks! It's fairly
trivial to put in a system where the drive and all run off the same
power supply/switch. The TRS-80 and like systems were prone due to each
being seperately powered. FYI the safest was powering off the drive
first.

FYI: for a while I was using 360k drive on non-PC and the risk was
always there, unless hardware prevented it external to the drive.

The 3.5" drives put power fail on the drive avoiding all the pain.


Allison
Received on Wed Dec 24 1997 - 20:37:21 GMT