Posted By
TLC
on 2011-03-03
04:37:00
|  Re: Rare Commodore SFD1001 disk drive
An interesting find indeed...  I'm wondering if the guy's gonna part with his CBM 720 too (which is an even more interesting find, considering the presumably low number of PET and CBM-II machines ever imported to HU).
The ad says the drive uses HD disks, which is crap. The drive eats QD disks, which is basically DD with just slightly better manufacturing quality (the magnetic properties of DD and QD are essentially the same, ...unlike HD, which is totally different). In HU I've never ever seen a QD disk in my whole life. All people I know of simply used DD disks in CBM high density drives (ie. drives like the SFD1001 and 8250LP the guy talks about). ...Nevertheless, the guy is obviously right that these drives provide 1M capacity on a single 5.25" disk. Basically DD 5.25" disks, yes.
Just as siz said, these are IEEE-488 drives. Back then, here (HU), there were lots of IEEE-488 interface cartridges manufactured for C64s -- simply because the SFD1001 has been a relatively "cheap" upgrade to 1541s. (By "cheap", I mean "cheaper than obtaining an already expensive PC-compatible computer, and re-writing our special C64-based application software"; it's definitely never been the toy of computer enthusiasts, it's been way too expensive for that). For Plus/4, I know of only one attempt to use an SFD1001: BSZ told me about his attempt to convert the ROM routines of a C64-based IEEE-488 interface card once. (He told me that it worked, but it obviously never became a product).
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