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Article #525

Re: Wiping out floppies (was: User's do the darnedest things)

#525
From: r... Robert Krawitz
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 1989 20:19
27 lines
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I can't speak for the Trash-80, but I remember that the old Exidy
Sorcerer drives were pretty flaky (the standard Micropolis ones, which
got me to hate Micropolis for quite a while).  The other brand of drive
that could be used (I think it was Shugart, but I might be wrong) was
better.  You really had to be careful with the diskettes you used; only
the 3M's were reliable.

Unlike the Radio Shaft 128K bytes, though, these held 596K.  I remember
that back in '79 or '80 I thought that was really neat (they were called
double side, quad density or double side, double density, 77 track to
distinguish them from the standard 38 track floppies).

It ran a fairly generic version of CP/M, though, which meant that any
disk error was completely irrecoverable.  I think that the Exidy BIOS
made some attempt to recover, though.

I could store about 12 hours of weather data on one of those beasts,
though.  Useful little sucker.  The guy I consulted for bought up the
last 100 or so Sorcerers after Exidy went bye-bye and sold them with a
variant on this program that ran off a ROM cartridge and used memory to
store a circular buffer, with no disk (basically a dedicated machine).
Last time I stopped by (a few years back) he was still using a few of
them around the office so anyone could call up weather data.
-- 
ames >>>>>>>>>  |	Robert Krawitz <r...@think.com>	245 First St.
bloom-beacon >  |think!rlk	(postmaster)		Cambridge, MA  02142
harvard >>>>>>  .	Thinking Machines Corp.		(617)876-1111
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References: <1820@odin.SGI.COM> <129435@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4675@itivax.iti.org> <21305@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <5940@alvin.mcnc.org>

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Path: mbox-mo1.pugleaf.net!gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!dino!ceres!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think!think.com
From: r...@think.com (Robert Krawitz)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Wiping out floppies (was: User's do the darnedest things)
Message-ID: <32437@news.Think.COM>
Date: 26 Dec 89 20:19:38 GMT
References: <1820@odin.SGI.COM> <129435@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <4675@itivax.iti.org> <21305@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <5940@alvin.mcnc.org>
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Reply-To: r...@think.com (Robert Krawitz)
Organization: Thinking Machines Corp., Cambridge MA
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Posted: Tue Dec 26 21:19:38 1989
In-reply-to: spl@mcnc.org (Steve Lamont)
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