Re: MFM drive gone nuts

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "smf" <smf@null.net>
To: <cbm-hackers@musoftware.de>
Sent: Monday, July 21, 2014 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: MFM drive gone nuts


> >What was 'shockingly non-standard' about PC floppy drives?
>
> Some drives need to be selected to have the motor on, others don't. This
> is from some interfaces having a separate line for each floppy motor
> control, while others have a single line shared between drives.
> Then there is the ready / disk change.
>
> I have an old drive out of a pc that had something like 10 different dip
> switches, so that it could be configured to be used with pretty much
> everything. It was similar to one of the models that commodore used, but
> they bought a cost reduced one with a fixed configuration.
>
----- Reply: -----

I suppose I'm picking nits, but with a few exceptions it was really the
various different interface configurations used by the *computers* of the
day that were non-standard (until IBM effectively established a de facto
'standard').

But yes, the many (often poorly documented) jumpers or switches required to
be able to adapt a drive to any of those different logical interfaces could
indeed cause considerable hair loss.

People like SD may bitch and moan because IBM deviated slightly from the
Shugart standard (or just because they're IBM), but they did indeed bring
some order to what had been pretty chaotic.

m


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