Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mia Magnusson" <mia@plea.se>
To: <cbm-hackers@musoftware.de>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?


> Den Tue, 8 Jan 2019 16:45:59 -0500 skrev "Mike Stein"
> <mhs.stein@gmail.com>:
>> Could you show us an example or two of desktop systems that actually
>> _had_ four internal full height drives on the same cable, as opposed
>> to IBM's two internal and two external?
> 
> Not sure how the cabling were done, but Cromemco system three had four
> drives. That's more or less the only system I know of that were sold
> with four drives.

As it happens I own a system 3 and the early versions really only had two drives, a pair of dual 8" Persci drives, unusual drives with two half-height slots driven by one common motor, similar idea as some of the later dual 5.25 & 3.5" combo drives.

Another unusual feature of the Persci drives was that they used a voice coil positioner, much faster than the taut-band or spiral screws used in other drives of the day; nice drives, but not very reliable.

So, not full-height, and somewhat larger and heavier than an IBM PC ;-)