randy@ranhome.UUCP (Randys Account) (10/31/85)
I have recently seen a product called the Enhancer 2001 disk drive in a number of mail order ads. Some of the ads imply that this item is produced by CBM. Has anyone seen or used this product? I am curious, in what way is it better than the 1541? Is it a serial bus device? Is it 100% compatible? What is the story behind this mysterious product (:-)). -- +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | allegra\ Randy Horton | | decwrl \ | | dual >!{pyramid,fortune}!ranhome!randy | | nsc / | | topaz / #include<clever disclaimer> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
mcewan@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU (11/04/85)
> I have recently seen a product called the Enhancer 2001 disk drive in a number > of mail order ads. Some of the ads imply that this item is produced by CBM. > Has anyone seen or used this product? I am curious, in what way is it better > than the 1541? Is it a serial bus device? Is it 100% compatible? What is > the story behind this mysterious product (:-)). Unless there are two models, its the Enhancer 2000, not 2001. It is a serial device that is supposed to completely emulate a 1541. I've had one for a few weeks. The good points are: It is much smaller than the 1541 (about 1/3 the volume). It is much quieter than the 1541. Since the power source is external, it never overheats. It is slightly faster than the 1541. Also, disk speed up cartridges (I use 1541 express) work and give you a drive slightly faster than a speeded up 1541. The bad points are: It is not 100% compatible, despite what some ads say. Not all protected programs will load from the Enhancer, so it is not a good choice for a primary drive. It is very nice as a secondary drive when using the Pro-line C compiler, though. It also has a few idiosyncrasies which don't seem to be a major problem. The command load "*",8 doesn't always load the right program. It appears to do pattern matching correctly, but sometimes doesn't get the order of files matched right (beats me how it can screw up on something that easy). I had one strange experience with the drive. I tried to reload a program that had just crashed one evening, and the drive refused to load, giving a "file not found" error. I tried reseting the drive, loading various things from different disks with no luck. I gave up and went to bed. The next morning, I gave it one more try before packing it up and returning it to the store. Same thing as the night before. As a last attempt I initialized the disk (open 8,15,8,"I"). The drive was back to normal. Does initializing a 1541 do anything that turning it off and on doesn't? Scott McEwan {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!mcewan "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"