see below, plz.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sellam Ismail" <foo_at_siconic.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: hard-sector 5 1/4 disk
> On Mon, 5 Nov 2001, Richard Erlacher wrote:
>
> > However, there's an easily observable basis for the beliefs regarding
> > the Apple][ disk subsystem that I've put forth in this case, unlike
> > the erroneous conclusions that early 20th-century Americans had drawn
> > about diet.
>
> In the Dick Erlacher World of Factually Erroneous and Frivelous Opinions,
> perhaps. In the real world? Nein.
>
> > The Apple][ disk subsystem was made in order to offer drives with a
> > capacity advantage over its competitor, the TRS-80 single-density
> > 5-14" drives. I don't remember the details of the cost difference,
>
> I think your timeline is in error here. I believe the Apple Disk ][ was
> on the market before the TRS-80 disk drives. And at any rate, your
> analysis is, again, wrong. Apple offered disk drives because it was a
> good marketing move, and it just happened to store more data than Radio
> Shack's because Woz's design was elegant, clever, and superior.
>
You may well be right about the timing, but the timing isn't the point. I'd
suggest you look in the old BYTE mag's (I've given all my useable ones away by
now) for the ads from Apparat, a Denver vendor of accessories for TRS-80 and
Apple systems. They were a client of mine and the FD subsystem they offered for
the TRS-80 was, as I recall, on the market at holiday time in 1979-'80. I'm
quite sure Apple had diskette drives out by then, since I got my own (8") drives
for my homebrew 6502 setup in '80.
That was my first contact with the TRS-80 after-market, but it seems to me that
the TRS-80 came out in '78 and was fully equipped (expansion interface, printer,
FDD's, modem, etc.) by holiday time of '79. Apparat also sold a replacement OS
for the TRS-80, which came out then. That will verify the times at which the Ap
ple FDD as well as the TRS-80 FDD became available. It's certainly possible I'm
off by a year.
However, the TRS-80 was, at whatever time they both had their FDD's available,
the only seriously competing system that Apple had to deal with because there
weren't any other single-supplier systems available, yet. At that point there
was no VIDEX board yet, either, IIRC. A year later things were completely
different because of the VIDEX board, the SVA FD interface, VISICALC, and a
number of other things. It was not my point, by the way, that Apple built their
drive as an answer to Tandy, but, rather, that they did the things they did in
order to save money on their floppy drive subsystem, because they were expensive
back then. They saved lots of dough with their tightly integrated
drive/controller arrangement since they not only used a really cheap set of
electronics, and quite a clever one, but didn't have to pay tens of bucks for a
then-still-very-costly FDC chip. That was a VERY big cost advantage, which, as
I wrote before, didn't show up as a price reduction that you'd notice.
As for the error rate, there were numerous assessments published over time, and
because their bit-error rate wasn't an entire order of magnitude higher, Apple
was able to brush it aside as "not even an order of magnitude" higher. It's
been studied extensively and perhaps there are even better figures on it now
than there were back then. The fact that it provided effectively double-density
media capacity made it a reasonable tradeoff for the not-totally-professional
user. I'm not sure about what figures were developed regarding
disk-error-induced system crashes.
>
> > but the main advantage to Apple was in that they built their own drive
> > electronics and cound benefit at the system level, cost-wise, from
> > every little thing they left out. First of all, they didn't have to
>
> <the rest of Dick's spewage flushed>
>
> Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
>
>
Received on Tue Nov 06 2001 - 19:10:37 GMT