Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

From: silverdr_at_wfmh.org.pl
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2019 12:57:22 +0100
Message-Id: <943711FD-02EA-4745-A13B-ABA2EBE39970@wfmh.org.pl>
> On 2019-01-05, at 22:16, Mike Stein <mhs.stein@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> But I should have known better than to comment on one of your usual disdainful posts...

I am sorry, Mike (really). It's simply that even after all those years I still maintain a rather strong opinion on the quality of engineering that went into the PC machine. Now the war is long over, and "we" lost it long ago. We may wonder what would be the outcome if IBM produced the resulting product alone and didn't let "clones" flood the world but what's done is done. Thus, if anything then probably more "bitter" than "disdainful". Quotes on purpose as I don't really feel either of the two in regards to the outcome of the said market war from decades ago.

> ...neither forced the logical drive id depend on the position on the cable
> 
> Why is this a problem? The computer world at the time was full of position-dependent cards and even disk drives, identical standard parts whose function depended on where/how they were plugged in. What's so wrong with "Drive A goes here and drive B goes there, especially since the cables were often labelled ?"


As this is not the first time, I believe we'll have to agree to disagree. At least on this particular topic. I only make once more a generic remark of "the fact that you never felt/experienced any problems with particular design choice (like the one in question) doesn't make the same valid for everyone else". I have different experiences than you with this and for me it's been a source of sizeable frustration back in the days.

> Just post a schematic showing where these transistors go and how they will allow grounding a signal connected to the same pin on two identical standard drives (TM100s) to generate a high on one drive and a low on the other and we can end this discussion.

Thank you for calling me on that as this is not the first time I take the same shortcut. It's "one gate", even if very simple (diode, transistor, .. based) one. You gate /MTR with /DSx as easy as possible and you're done - aren't you? That's what should have been done instead of twisting parts of flat cables.

-- 
SD! - https://e4aws.silverdr.com/
Received on 2019-01-07 13:00:03

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