Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gerrit Heitsch" <gerrit@laosinh.s.bawue.de>
To: <cbm-hackers@musoftware.de>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?


> On 1/8/19 5:07 PM, Mike Stein wrote:
>> 
>> I think it was a clever hack; if you insist on seeing it as evidence of the incompetence of the designers and engineers who had to build it within the usual constraints, so be it.
> 
> It was a clever hack. But it also meant you were limited to only 2 
> drives per Controller where the standard back then allowed up to 4 
> drives on a cable.
> 
>  Gerrit

Once again: the controller allowed 4 drives but the additional two drives had to be connected externally where the drives would have to be anyway; not many desktop systems of the day actually had room to put four full-height drives on the same cable inside the system chassis.

Of course when half-height drives came along if you really wanted 4 drives (and had sufficient power) you could simply run the cable back inside the chassis.