Commodore 8050M disk drive. What's it for?

From: Gunther Schadow <gunther_at_aurora.regenstrief.org>
Date: Tue Apr 24 11:40:29 2001

Cameron Kaiser wrote:
>
> > I just picked up a Commodore 8050M dual 5 1/4" disk drive with a HP-IB
> > interface in a surplus place. Can anyone tell me what system(s) it's made
> > to work with?
>
> PETs, of course! And any Commodore with an IEEE-488 interface, even the 64
> if you happen to have an IEEE interface cartridge.

Do you call all the CBM computers "PET"? I started my computing carreer
on a PET, it had a built-in cassette recorder and a really bad keyboard.
I never used a floppy with a PET.

The 8050 I've seen first with the CBM 8000 (?) machines (or was it 1580?
either 4000 and 8000 or 1540 and 1580, I can't remember.) Sometimes when
disks were not read properly it helped closing the flap slowly just when
the drive started moving ... just like ol' times :-)

I have a 1541 floppy drive and a C=64 that doesn't work any more. Where
could one get a C=64? I have seen interesting emulators for i386 Unix
and X. I even read something about connecting a 1541 to the PC. The
problem with those emulators is they want a BASIC and KERNEL ROM image.
I can't pull those off my breadbox anymore since it is dead. Any ideas
where I could get those images from? Will my 20 years old diskettes still
work? I once wrote a program to backup floppies to cassette tape using
turbo tape. My first macro-assembler project. Did it for a friend, worked
like a charm. Unfortunately I didn't back up anything myself :-(

regards
-Gunther
Received on Tue Apr 24 2001 - 11:40:29 BST