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Improved IEEE Drives


As mentioned in the entry for the 8050 and 8250, the late seventies/early eighties saw some of the most interesting disk drives ever to come out of those Canadian factories. They somehow managed to cram as much data on Double Density disks as we cram on High Density disks of the same size today. Simply amazing. These drives were marketed with the CBM-II line machines, as well is the PET 80XXSK high end computer line.

Like all Commodore disk drives, these drives were "smart" devices. They included their own processor, their own memory, and their own disk operating system. In fact, the relationship between a Commodore computer and it's disk drive resembles more closely two computers on a network than a typical Computer->peripheral relationship. The peripherals on the IEEE-488 "network" each had a unique identifying "Unit" number, typically ranging from 8-30. This number identified which physical device was being accessed. When a disk drive contained more than one floppy drive (like the 8250lp on this page), you also had to refer to the particular "drive" number you wanted (typically 0 or 1). Single-floppy drives, like the SFD-1001, still had to deal with the legacy of the dual drives by referring to their single floppy as "drive 0".



cbm/ieeedrives/BookCovr.gif
cbm/ieeedrives/8250lp.gif

Model    : 8250lp
Type     : Dual 5.25" Floppy Disk
Media    : Double Sided, Double Density
Capacity : 1024K per disk, or 2048K total
Interface: IEEE-488
Dos      : CBM DOS 2.7
Notes    : Demo disk



cbm/ieeedrives/sfd1001.gif

Model    : SFD-1001
Type     : 5.25" Floppy Disk
Media    : Double Sided, Double Density
Capacity : 1024K per disk
Interface: IEEE-488
Dos      : CBM DOS 2.7
Notes    :



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