Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/3/84; site panda.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!talcott!panda!sbp From: sbp@panda.UUCP (Brown Pulliam) Newsgroups: net.micro.cbm Subject: Re: 1meg drive Message-ID: <888@panda.UUCP> Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 09:34:19 EDT Article-I.D.: panda.888 Posted: Mon Sep 9 09:34:19 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 11-Sep-85 04:55:20 EDT References: <196@vilya.UUCP> Reply-To: sbp@panda.UUCP (Brown Pulliam) Distribution: net Organization: GenRad, Inc., Concord, Mass. Lines: 43 In article <196@vilya.UUCP> rmd@vilya.UUCP (MACDONALD) writes: >has anyone purchased that 1 meg drive from Protecto?. >Would like to know how it works compared to the 1541. The Drive referred to is the Commodore SFD-1001. It appears to have been designed after the 1541 to be their high end floppy drive, and comes in a case the same size and shape as the 1541. Apparently, they decided not to market it as a regular product, to concentrate on the 1571, Amiga, etc, so unloaded the lot to Protecto and at least one other company in Denver. Mine has a serial number in the 5000 s. The SFD-1001 uses a format very similar to the older Commodore 8250 drive, and in fact the manual I received was written in 1982 for the older line of drives (4040, 8050, and 8250). This puts slightly over half a megabyte on each side of a 5 1/4 in. floppy. I'm told that good quality double sided, double density disks will work with this drive, but the local surplus house (UNITECH in Campbidge, MA) sells what they call a Quad Density DS disk for about $12/ten, and these definitly work well. The drive has upper and lower R/W heads, so the floppy case only has one notch. NOTE, the SFD-1001 is not R/W compatible with disks formatted on the 8250. The drive requires a IEEE interface, which Protecto sells for about $70. with the drive and one person I know bought that and is satisfied with it. My own interface is the RTC C Link, a somewhat more expensive gadget which I had been using to connect between my C-64 and my 4040 Dual Drive. This also works well with the SFD-1001, and is probably a little faster because unlike the Commodore and BusCard interfaces that connect through the Serial Port, the C Cink uses the Expan- sion (parallel) Port. Disk access speeds are, as you would expect, the same as with my 4040, which is 6 to 10 times faster than the 1541. I made a piggy back (24 pin Blue Ribbon to 24 pin Blue Ribbon) jumper cable to connect the SFD to the 4040, and had no trou- ble using the utility program supplied to make one answer as Drive 8, and the other as Drive 9. Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm going to do when faced with 4100 Blocks Free ! Brown