Re: Apple II Disk Drive Question

[russotto@grace.speakeasy.net (Matthew Russotto)]

In article <44141ca1$0$95937$742ec2ed@news.sonic.net>,
Don Bruder  <dakidd@sonic.net> wrote:
>In article <dv0qit$30dl$1@merope.saaf.se>,
> pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter) wrote:
>
>> In article 
>> <Pine.LNX.4.62.0603120227190.3126@static-141-149-129-16.buff.east.verizon.net>
>> ,
>> > On Sat, 11 Mar 2006, Jack Tseng wrote:
>> > 
>> >> Is it faster than Commodore 1541 or Atari XF551???
>> > 
>> > ANYTHING is faster than a 1541. (I'm quite sure the disk ][ is)
>>  
>> Including Cassette Tape ???   <g>
>
>
>Little do you realize... :) 
>
>1541s were basically nothing more than a tape drive operating with a 
>tape that was round instead of being a long ribbon on two reels. A Disk 
>II getting multiple recoverable read errors on every sector it read 
>would STILL run rings around a 1541, and not even break a sweat doing it.

An IBM 3420 Model 8 -- state of the art in 1973 -- could read magtape
at 1250KB/sec.  That's kilobytes, not kilobits.

The Commodore 1541, complete with its own 6502 microprocessor -- and using
basically the same format as the 3420, only without error correction
and only one track at a time -- managed 300 bytes per second.
Commodore must have had the Anti-Woz designing their drive.

The Apple cassette tape was about 180 bytes per second, making it slower
than the 1541.
-- 
  There's no such thing as a free lunch, but certain accounting practices can
  result in a fully-depreciated one.