The List! & books involving computers

From: Susan M Johnson <sjohnson_at_GAS.UUG.Arizona.EDU>
Date: Thu May 8 13:15:55 1997

On Sun, 4 May 1997, Roger Merchberger wrote:

> Whilst in a self-induced trance, Steven J. Feinsmith happened to blather:
> >Susan M Johnson wrote:
>
> >> Currently, the H/Z-100 can run 8", 5 1/4" (40 & 96 tpi), and 3 1/2" (96
> >> & 135 tpi) floppy disk drives; MFM hard drives (also RLL, although not
> >> common), tape drives, and SCSI drives. CD-ROM drives are also possible.
> >
> >During days of H/Z-110 and 120... there are only two floppy disk drives,
> >5.25" and 8". The 8" system was short lived. There was never using
> >3.5

8" system short lived?? Hmm, guess there are numerous H/Z-100 users out
there who don't know that :)

> >but some people successful attempted this way when H/Z-100 were no
> >longer
> >in market. They have to write a special software included BIOS to work
> >with 3.5" drive. SCSI system on H/Z-110 or 120 was very rarely. Those
> >days it was called SASI. There was never using tape drive or CD-ROM
> >drives
> >because H/Z-110 or 120 never use with IDE or EIDE. But it can use with
> >SCSI based interfaced.
>
> I have a few comments on what each of you said:
>
> Steven: Notice that Susan wrote "Currently," at the beginning of the
> sentance. That means that altho the 3.5" disk drives weren't available at
> the time of the machine's introduction, you can easily get any machine that
> uses the standard 34-pin floppy interface to use a 3.5" disk drive. I

Right, the 3.5" drive support was not part of the original Heath/Zenith
design; it was provided later by some members of a user group. You can
use either the 34-pin interface or the 50-pin interface to run it. (Z-100
has both interfaces, the 50-pin floppy interface being the one you also
use for the 8" drives.)

> Steven: Also, SASI and SCSI are *different*, SASI being the precursor of
> SCSI. Altho they are *somewhat* compatible IIRC, SCSI did have extra
> features that could not be used with a SASI interface.
>

The SCSI support wasn't part of the original design, either. An add-in
board to provide that capability was designed, built, and put into
production a few years ago by several members of the user group. I am
now using a 170 Meg SCSI drive (not SASI) on my computer as a result.

> Susan: You're sentance above is slightly misleading, however, as there were
> no 96tpi 3.5" drives that I've ever heard of (and I own some *weird* ones!)
> Everything from the 200K SSSD Tandy Portable Disk Drive 2 (used for Tandy's
> *early* non-MSDOS laptops) right on up to the 2.88Meg ED drives are 135TPI.
>
> Hope this helps!
> Roger "Merch" Merchber

Yup, I screwed up on that. Should have said that it now supports
double-density and high-density 3.5" drives. You can either use a regular
MS-DOS format (720 K or 1.4 M), or a non-standard format that results in
800 K or 1.8 M disks. I've got a dual-density 3.5" drive that works great
at either DD or HD, standard or non-standard formats. It is also possible
to use a quad-density drive although I don't personally have one.

On another matter, I think someone mentioned something about compiling a
list of books/movies that involve computers. _The Moon Is A Harsh
Mistress_ by Robert A. Heinlein involves a sentient computer who helps
guide a revolution on the moon against Earth. Unfortunately, while the
revolution was successful, the computer was no longer sentient at the
end. :( I can't remember if the computer had a name.

Susan


 
Received on Thu May 08 1997 - 13:15:55 BST

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