meier%isl@AMSAA.ARPA (03/13/84)
Thanks in advance, In the near future, I will be purchasing a disk controller card for a 4 MHz CP/M system with two 8" double density floppy disk drives. I would very much appreciate any comments that anyone has on particular brands and features. I'm especially interested in any comments concerning the Versafloppy II. I will corellate and post on the net, the results of this survey. Since access to my computer is not available from many sites, please send your responses to the net. Thank you, Bob Meier (isl!meier@shasta)
SHahn@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (03/13/84)
From: Sam Hahn <SHahn@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA> I ran a similar system for 2+ years. I give unqualified recommendations on SD Systems boards for reliability and functionality. They have never ever given me so much as a glitch, even when I've moved from place to place. HOWEVER! There are a few things to think about. The VfyII I got in Dec '81 was part of their SBC-200,ExpIII,etc board set, which does not strictly conform to 696 standards. That's one problem (though I could run any number of boards I wanted to run with little problem, including SSM I/O, Heuristics Speechlab, MD MultI/O, a QT clock, and more). The new boards that SD is advertising DOES conform to 696, however, so that's a step in the right direction. Another problem is that the formats understood by the VfyII and supported by SD Systems are not widely used. Practically the only way I could move files from my SD higher density disks onto my new Compupro system was to do a copy from the orig's to SSSD 8", and then read that standard format. A pain for 100+ disks, not to mention what you have to go through if you have more. These two problems are the only reservations I have about the VFYII, and their impact on your application is not for me to decide. Suffice to say that if I hadn't made the move to Compupro, I'd have little to complain about: deviations from 696 haven't affected me at all. -- sam hahn [shahn@sumex] -------