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From: d6b@psuecl.bitnet
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: GVP Trade-in
Message-ID: <20552.26e4cf4d@psuecl.bitnet>
Date: 5 Sep 90 14:11:24 GMT
References: <1990Sep4.213845.2043@agora.uucp>
Organization: Engineering Computer Lab, Pennsylvania State University
Lines: 19

In article <1990Sep4.213845.2043@agora.uucp>, billsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour) writes:
>
>       Actually, with the current Paula chips, data transfer from the floppies
>       is done at 250Kbit/sec. Not the 500Kbit.sec that the HD type drives
>       do. That's why it's so much trouble to get the 1.76M floppies working
>       on the Amiga.

Yes and no. The transfer rate is indeed 500Kbps, but the data is raw
undecoded MFM. It would be extremely easy for Commodore to add support for
the HD drives to Paula simply by adding an MFM encode/decode circuit (which
should be easy, since MFM is such a simple encoding scheme). Of course,
you could also try to add this capability externally, but it might end up
being rather clumsy; it might be easier to design a completely seperate
controller with its own buffer memory, etc.

Note: Applied Eng.'s "high density" drive is not "real" high density as
I mean in this posting (as explained in an earlier posting...:-))

-- Dan Babcock