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Re: Vista V1200 diskette changer
On 7/16/2010 12:18 PM, Steven Hirsch wrote:
Does anyone have documentation or software for this unit? It used a
Vista A800 8" disk controller and an Amlyn Minipac 5-diskette changer.
Just bought one on eBay and am trying to scrape together the information
and/or software to get it running.
I spotted an archived thread between Mike Mahon and Mr.Brad/Lost Gonzo
and am wondering if either of you fine gentlemen have docs or software?
Heck, at this point I'd settle for theory of operation.
Not clear at all how the drive maps tracks and sectors on the floppies
to make it appear as a contiguous logical disk.
Hi, Steve--congratulations on your acquisition!
I'm not sure how it does that either, or whether it looks like a set
of distinct volumes. With only one drive, it would be powerfully slow
to write a file on one floppy and update the directory on another!
I acquired a drive and one or two floppies for it at a surplus house
in the Bay Area over 15 years ago. It came with no documentation,
software, or adapter. I remember cutting an ordinary floppy to work
like one of the "native" ones, but never actually wrote or read any
data.
I applied power and observed that it initialized itself, but other than
that, it has been "cold". ;-)
The mechanism for changing floppies is fairly complex, but seemed to
work. This makes it perhaps the smallest "jukebox" drive ever made. ;-)
-michael
NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/
"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."