Apple Floppy Drives (was: More Apple Pimpers)

From: Eric Chomko <vze2wsvr_at_verizon.net>
Date: Wed Nov 7 15:03:16 2001

Allison wrote:

> General comment,
>
> Most 8" systems were expected be and behaved reliably and have
> at least 250k of space.
>
> Most 5.25" systems could be reliable but, often weren't. I'll restrict
> comments to 5.25" for the later reason.
>
> Most of the complaints I've had with disk systems be they Apple or not
> were often in this order.
>
> 1- Drives (SA400 was pure garbage!!!)

Whoa! I bought my Smoke Signal Broadcasting disk system back in 1978
with two SA400 drives. I added a third drive in the late 80s. To this day
all three drives work great. I did switch drives 0 and 2 to allow the most
used drive to get less use and the newest drive to become the main drive.
But, I'd hardly call a disk drive "pure garbage" that has lasted for 12 and
23 years! And that is in lieu of the fact that they had a 5 year life
expectency.

my 2 cents...

>
> 2- horribly botched controllers (TRS-80 without mods)
> 3- software such as disk drivers that would hang if no media or errors
> 4- floppy drives/controlers that would "bite" the media on power up or
> down.
> meaning it would write trash due to no write locks.
> 5- not enough space
>

Considering the alternative to #5 was cassette or paper tape, we lived with it!

>
> The apple-II was plagued with #1 and somewhat with #3 depending on
> OS and definately #4. Space was a problem for many users(#5)

>

> Trash-80 was 1 through 5 example.
>
> NS* mostly #4 had to be watched if the drives were seperately powered and
> earlier units were SA400 (#1 problem). The SD controller while bullet proof
> was
> space poor at 90k per drive (#5).
>

My SSB system was SS/SD soft-sector and had a whopping 80KB storage
capacity per diskette. Didn't TRS-80, Apple II, Northstar and others ALL have
a different scheme (i.e. more capacity, hard-sectoring, double sided/density)?

My point is that, maybe they were trying to do to much with the little ole
SA400
than the thinhs was designed to do?


>
> CCS used 8" disks and reliable controller. It was however prone to #4.
> Many S100 system that used 8" drives and the better 5.25 drives fell
> in this realm of reliability though most with 5.25 were pretty cramped
> until 360k(DD) or 720->780k(QD aka two sided DD) formats were common.
>

By then CP/M and S-100 was dying.


>
> Of the most reliable my AmproLB+, Kaypro 4/84 with Advent turborom,NS*
> (both SD and DD) and most of the post 1981 systems in the commercial
> systems space. My expectations of reliable were set by minicomputers
> long before micros I'd worked with where if the disk didn't work it was
> something I did wrong.
>

Mini computers had their fare share of disk problems too. The Interdata 7/16
systems I worked on in the mid-70s were slated to be outfitted with
floppy drives. They could never make them work. It was either hard disks
(20 MB system, w/10MB fixed and 10MB removable), or good ole paper
tape and TTYs.


>
> Of all, my opinion is that floppies were ok but the first real improvement
> was the 3.5" drives(720k and 1.44m generation) with the power fail logic
> on board. They offered good storage, small size, lower power, good
> reliability
> and quieter than the whole lot.
>

And the fact that the 1.44MB floppy is STILL a standard device on many
systems to this very day.

Eric

>
> Allison
Received on Wed Nov 07 2001 - 15:03:16 GMT