Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)

From: Louis Schulman <louiss_at_gate.net>
Date: Tue Nov 6 20:48:31 2001

On Tue, 06 Nov 2001 20:52:45 -0500, Craig Landrum wrote:

#It wasn't clear to me in your original post that you were
#referring to the Apple II diskette drive, but I understand
#now. And yeah - the IWM (Incredible Woz Machine) diskette
#controller WAS fairly sensitive. I never owned an Apple II,
#but heard about them.

"I never owned an Apple II, but heard about them." Now THAT is authoritative. Well, I have owned a
bunch of them and a room full of Disk IIs. They were and are by far the most reliable disk drive from the
early home PC era.

TRS-80 drives? I have a beautiful Model 1 setup. But talk about trashing disks! And slow!

What about the single board CP/M machines? I have them too. The disk drives on the Osborne were,
based on extensive experience, the least reliable ever made. If one drive could read what another had
written, it was a gift from God. And with the double density upgrade, it was much worse.

Commodore PET drive system. Holy smoke, a whole second computer just to operate the drives, and even
then, blecch.

And even later, how about the "ingenious" DEC double disk-munching drives, that couldn't format disks?

I'll take the Disk II any day.

Louis
Received on Tue Nov 06 2001 - 20:48:31 GMT