Re: Did Commodore cheat with the quad density floppies?

On 1/8/2019 11:00 AM, Mike Stein wrote:
> A question for those folks who think that the twisted cable was a hardware-crippling hack by incompetent "engineers":
>
> IDE drives & cables essentially did the same thing, modifying the cable by cutting one wire so that CS could be implemented.
>
> Is that the same thing? Is it really unacceptable to use a modified cable in order to be able to just plug in a drive anywhere without having to worry about Master/Slave jumpers?
>
Inasmuch as this conversation is akin to tilting at windmills, I will 
place my useless opinion in the mix:

I believe they are the same thing, once you factor in the time periods.  
As the PC revolution was starting, minimizing jumper setting needs for 
drives with a cable twist feels justified.  Obviously, SD disagrees, but 
requiring the jumpers would also have angered some folks, so you can't win.

I caveat my agreement with the time period, because the absolute 
similarity is lacking.  As others have noted, CS and the chopped cable 
"added" value without removing the master slave jumper options.  IN that 
way, it offers value of less configuration without sacrificing any 
previous capability.  The cable flip does limit drive options (and, I 
would love to put 4 FDDs on my older PC here, so it is relevant to me).

Regardless of whether folks concur with my position or not is of no 
concern to me.  But, as an engineer, I align more with Mike Stein on 
this argument.  Even if folks completely disagree with the engineering 
decisions made by IBM or Commodore or whoever, I implore you to not 
diminish or demonize the engineers who worked on the product.  The 
decisions were made in the presence of a great number of constraints 
that we may never know about.  It's a personal pet peeve that we sit on 
this list and judge the engineers and the decisions they made in the 
1980s by comparing it to what we now know about the market and 
technology.  It's highly non-productive, in my opinion.

I think we can all agree that IBM of the 1980s was a behemoth and did 
not move quickly.  I choose to think there were some bright engineers in 
IBM who loved the company and knew the company should be in the personal 
computer market before it slipped away from Big Blue's reach, and they 
compromised many things in order to bring out a product very quickly to 
the marketplace.  It was not pretty, it had significant shortcomings, 
but it grew into an industry and won over all of the more compelling 
designs in the Marketplace. Those engineers knew something it has taken 
years for me to understand.  You can improve a crappy design using sales 
and revisions that drive sales, but you can't survive if your 
engineering masterpiece misses the market opportunity.

The goal of the engineer, thus: make as few compromises as necessary in 
order to get into the market; sell enough product to allow a 
re-engineering effort to remove the compromises.

Jim


-- 
Jim Brain
brain@jbrain.com
www.jbrain.com