Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

> They ordered custom (IBM) branded ones. Only the custom injection moulds cost probably more than the whole thing we talk about here. Off-the-shelf story of CRippled hardware was a result, not cause of what IBM did.
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So putting an IBM logo on front of some (not all!) floppy drives was the cause of 'crippled hardware'? 

And the 'crippled hardware' was not "cause of what IBM did"?

This 'discussion' isn't even making any sense at all any more, so let's drop it.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <silverdr@wfmh.org.pl>
To: <cbm-hackers@musoftware.de>
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 3:11 AM
Subject: Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?



> On 2019-01-07, at 21:02, Mike Stein <mhs.stein@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <silverdr@wfmh.org.pl>
> To: <cbm-hackers@musoftware.de>
> Sent: Monday, January 07, 2019 6:58 AM
> Subject: Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?
> 
> 
> Yes, and if wishes were horses beggars would ride. Although some modern direct-drive drives do have this option, the drives of the day did not; 

Again - the same story as some time ago - IBM did NOT take "off-the shelf" drives as you like to tell the world. They ordered custom (IBM) branded ones. Only the custom injection moulds cost probably more than the whole thing we talk about here. Off-the-shelf story of CRippled hardware was a result, not cause of what IBM did.

> as a matter of fact some contemporary 8" drives were driven with a constantly-on 120 (or 240)V. line-powered motor, albeit often with a head-load solenoid. 

IBM PC used 5.25" drives.

> What I find slightly offensive is denigrating the IBM engineers of the day (by putting "engineers" in quotes for example) for devising an IMO very clever way of working around this 'shortcoming' without having to modify all the drives as you would have them do.

Order ones with proper design in there. Either they specified things wrong upon ordering and had to do "brilliant" hacks once it was too late to change the order or they didn't think of the proper design in advance. Either case doesn't give them much credit. And compare what they did to what virtually every other, self-respectful engineering team did about the same time when building their machines and having to deal with the very same constraints of the time. Then you'll know why the quotes.

> The alternative of turning on the motor with the DS signal would mean delaying access until the motor came up to speed; imagine disk-to-disk copy with relatively crude belt-driven motors starting and stopping with every access...

Which - just _which_ of other designs of any significance, which _doesn't_ use the hack you appreciate so much, expose this kind of problem?

> It's so easy to sit back and criticize the decisions and choices made in the distant past without fully taking into account the constraints that influenced them.

It's also easy to see today what others were doing about the same time and compare.

-- 
SD! - https://e4aws.silverdr.com/