Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mailrus!ames!pacbell!hoptoad!peora!rtmvax!bilver!bill
From: bill@bilver.UUCP (Bill Vermillion)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy
Subject: Re: Radio Shack personnel
Message-ID: <248@bilver.UUCP>
Date: 3 Jul 89 16:50:12 GMT
References: <1129@ucf-cs.UCF.EDU> <235@bilver.UUCP> <2839@puff.cs.wisc.edu>
Reply-To: bill@bilver.UUCP (Bill Vermillion)
Distribution: usa
Organization: W. J. Vermillion, Winter Park, FL
Lines: 28

In article <2839@puff.cs.wisc.edu> dinda@cat21.CS.WISC.EDU (Peter Dinda) writes:
>
>   
>Seems like a typical Radio Shack thing to do - put a controller card for an 
>outdated machine 'on sale' for an outrageous price.  I'm sure you can do   
>better with a third party controller - and probably a third party hard
>drive as well.  Check out PCM magazine.
>
No such thing as third party controllers for these machines.  The controller
interfaces to an extension of the internal bus, and is a "host adaptor" and
controller on one card.  PCM magazine won't help..  This is z80 based
architecture.

If you need it the price isn't that bad.  

Third party hard drives are no problem if you know what you are doing.

Don't jump on R/S too hard on this one.  That bus extension is virtually the
same on all their Z-80 based machines.  And it was released (the bus that is)
to the world just about 2 years BEFORE IBM announced the PC.

Attaching the controller to the drive isn't a bad idea.  It seemed to take
years before the PC industry picked that up ala the "hard-card" units.

bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - UUCP: {uiucuxc,hoptoad,petsd}!peora!rtmvax!bilver!bill
                      : bill@bilver.UUCP