Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Nov 6 23:51:02 2001

Ugh! ... you'd be hard pressed to pick a worse example of a "standard" inteface
to a floppy disk than the one used in the TRS-80, though lots of allegations
were made about it. The TRS-80 is a poor example, apparenly right up to the
model IV, and I know very little about its reputation. Tony Duell recently
pointed out that his early experience with that indicated that it worked fairly
well when the drives were well maintained. I only became familiar with the
TRS-80 as a problem to be solved.

In '81, I bought a CCS S-100 setup, which was the first complete "system" I'd
bought from a single vendor, and attached it to a terminal. At that point I
figured that was all it took. I didn't ever have a problem with that
hardware/software, and I used that setup so much I ultimately bought a second
one just like it, with another two Mistubishi 8" drives. I don't think I even
thought about possible diskette failures.

Most of the fellows I knew, at the time, to be Apple users, had other systems,
mostly homebrews, and those either didn't have disk drives, or had 8" types, as
I had on my homebrew box. It was pretty obvious from the fact that most folks
who were using the Apple in an attempt to do something other than either make or
break copy protection for Apple games, which a couple of the guys were doing,
and making good money at it, that one had to have 8" drives in order to have
reliable disk function on the Apple. Most of the guys I knew at the time who
made money with their Apple]['s were doing it with 8" drives, even though they
had to deliver their work product on Apple diskettes.

The IWM was, indeed, incredible. It did several things that were extremely
significant, particularly because of the favorable treadoff between hardware and
software, to help the bottom line. It did so, however, at the cost that the
resulting subsystem was a mite prone to hiccup, which it still is. It was never
fixed, since there really isn't a way to fix it. It's fragile, and the only way
to live with that is to recognize the vulnerabilities, and to work around them,
which is clearly possible.

In 1981, the PC was released, and that was the death knell for computers like
the Apple. Even so, they hung on for several years. Even devoted Apple][ fans,
though, have, for the most part, sobered up enough since the '80's to recognize
that the Apple floppy disk subsystem wasn't as solid as one might have hoped.

As for the SBC's, Osborne did have FDC problems, as did Otrona. The Xerox 820,
the Ferguson Big Board, and both of their scions, always were pretty stabile,
though, and, frankly, I seldom heard about disk drive problems in the context of
CP/M boxes, virtually all of which used pretty vanilla flavored FD subsystems.

In the 8-9 years that I used 8" drives as my main medium for data interchange, I
had perhaps two or three diskette failures that I remember, and I don' think
many others had more trouble than I did. That is not what I read and heard
about the Apple disk subsystem.

Lots of people loved the Apple. The packaging concept was so successful that
IBM even emulated it, though they were somewhat weak in their concept of size.

Dick


----- Original Message -----
From: "Louis Schulman" <louiss_at_gate.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2001 7:48 PM
Subject: Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)


> 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 - 23:51:02 GMT