Posted By
SVS
on 2010-04-27
13:38:25
 |  1581 quiz
Do you know why 1581 is so called?
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-04-27
15:07:38
| Re: 1581 quiz
I got no clue.  Tried to cheat with Google but had no luck. 
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Posted By
Andras78
on 2010-04-27
15:10:23
| Re: 1581 quiz
hmmm... because the 1581 stores 790K on a 3.5 inch (90 mm) double sided, double density disk? 
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-04-27
19:51:12
| Re: 1581 quiz
Wasn't it simply because that was their numbering system? Increase by 10 for every model. They had 1531, 1541, 1551, 1571 and then 1581. Not sure why 1561 was not released.
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-04-28
02:36:54
| Re: 1581 quiz
The original name of the 1581 was 1561. Later (before releas) they renamed it to 1581. Probably to sign that this is a more advanced drive than the 1571.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2010-04-28
05:42:46
| Re: 1581 quiz
Well, the reason I know is that it uses 3,5" floppies that were invented in 1981.
BTW Sony has just announced that it will suspend any support to floppy since 2011 (after 30 years from creating).
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Posted By
siz
on 2010-04-28
06:39:06
| Re: 1581 quiz
Did you know that Sony took the idea of the 3,5" floppy disk from a hungarian inventor? Sorry to those who don't speak hungarian: http://index.hu/tech/hardver/jm0206/
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Posted By
Andras78
on 2010-04-28
09:15:46
| Re: 1581 quiz
Wow I've never know it, thanks!
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-04-28
10:07:52
| Re: 1581 quiz
[Citation needed] Wow, so many unverified claims!
Key sentence from the above referenced Hungarian article: "A most 75 éves, súlyosan beteg Jánosi hivatásos feltalálónak tartja magát." "The 75 year old Jánosi, who is now seriously ill, considers himself to be the official inventor." (Emphasis mine.) They link to Wikipedia, and indeed he has an article, but it's not translated to any other language or contain any citations. The article mentions 1974, but the English Wikipedia page on floppy disks say it was invented at IBM in 1971 -- and has citations to back it up. This means that SVS' claim is very likely to be invalid (since the year is wrong)
Also, according to the Secret Weapons of Commodore site (Google it), the 1561 did exist and was intended for the Commodore LCD, but was never released. That's only one site though, but to me they have credibility since they recearched this topic extensively, so siz's guess about the rename is also likely to be wrong.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2010-04-28
11:28:00
| Re: 1581 quiz
Csabo: he considers himself to be an inventor, not "the" inventor of the MCD-1. The article very clearly states that they had designed the MCD-1 + the corresponding small floppy disk themself around 1974, and they even had a patent on it until the early 80s (when the authorities decided not to extend it... fail).
One piece of that drive is on permanent exhibition at some Hungarian museum (whose name I already don't remember but remember seeing it exhibited myself).
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-04-28
11:48:00
| Re: 1581 quiz
I stand corrected!
Saying that Sony took the idea from him is a bit of an exaggaration though. Read the Wikipedia topic on the history of the floppy disk. Sounds like there very many companies and many formats, until they made a committee to decide on an industry standard.
Doesn't take us closer to finding out the story of the 1581's name - if there's a story to be found.
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Posted By
SVS
on 2010-04-28
12:21:10
| Re: 1581 quiz
From what I read, Sony did start to include a 3.5" device in its products since 1981. If I remember well nobody used it (3.5") before. At time first PCs had one or double 5.25" only.
The "floppy" disk was invented by IBM in the last '60s and was 8" sized (1.2 Mb).
BTW pals, the correct item codes of our dears are: 154I and 155I (look at drives please )
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Posted By
Csabo
on 2010-04-28
14:25:24
| Re: 1581 quiz
Even if you consider 1981 to be some kind of official date, in my humble opinion the relation to the name of the C= drive is just a coincidence.
Interesting observation about 154I The second 1 is styled without serifs on the drive, sure. The 1551 is not however, both number ones are without serifs. Also, from the official manuals etc. it's obvious that C= meant the name to be 1541, not the 154 plus the letter I.
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Posted By
TLC
on 2010-04-29
12:46:39
| Re: 1581 quiz
Csabo: yes. It's also very likely that they didn't intend it to be an 'I' just because there had been a 1540 drive before the 1541. (The 1540 is a 2031 drive with its IEEE-488 interface and ROMs replaced by "serial IEC" hardware and routines, ie. the first "serial IEC" drive that they introduced the VIC-20 with; the 1541 is just a small update upon the 1540 (...should I call it a re-badged 1540) with fixed ROMs for the newly introduced C64s slower serial routines). If they intended it to be 154I, they'd probably have called the 1540 '154O' instead... but obviously they didn't.
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