Re: Happy 30th Birthday to Disk ][ and Apple DOS

[stocks.hunts@yahoo.com]

On Jul 11, 3:09 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:
> Michael Black wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Jul 2008, mdj wrote:
>
> >> On Jul 10, 11:15 pm, pau...@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
>
> >> But really, the Disk ][ was fast, simple, and therefore cheap. The
> >> controller was not only industry changing, but a work of art.
>
> > That's ambiguous.
>
> > If it was so "industry changing" then everyone else would have leaped
> > to the design.  And nobody did.  A handful of companies did use GCR
> > formatting, Commodore comes immediately to mind, but they sure didn't use
> > such a simple controller.  And of course to balance the controller design,
> > Apple had to have special drives manufactured, because a standard drive
> > had "too much circuitry".  That's a liability, and even into the age of
> > the Mac the non-standard drives were a negative thing for Apple, since
> > it kept the cost high.
>
> Well, actually, Apple had a deal with Shugart to buy drives *very*
> cheaply without the "analog card" and the head load solenoid (which
> was optional anyway).  The volumes Apple ordered made the partial
> drives a very good deal for both Apple and Shugart.
>
> The drive sold to Apple was simply an "incomplete" or "stripped" drive
> that was considerably cheaper than the "loaded" drive, and, controlled
> by RWTS, faster, too!
>
> Since Shugart set the standard for drives and heads, as other drive
> manufacturers entered the 5.25" arena, most could easily be bought in
> the stripped configuration to work with Apple analog boards--or, as
> the market grew, even ordered with Apple-compatible analog boards.
>
> In the 3.5" era, Apple's use of non-standard speed controls did limit
> their choice of suppliers, but that's a different matter.
>
> -michael
>
> AppleCrate: An Apple II "blade server"!
> Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
>
> "The wastebasket is our most important design
> tool--and it's seriously underused."

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