[Info-vax] Anyone interested in another public access system

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <5dadnXyKmKljWUHUnZ2dnUVZ_sSdnZ2d at giganews.com>,
	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> In article <xi2Dl.24047$Ws1.19815 at nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com>,
>> 	Michael Austin <maustin at firstdbasource.com> writes:
>>> yyyc186 wrote:
>>>> Oh, I forgot.  Someone has to have a lot of extra cash lying around if
>>>> we ever want to see the DEC Professional content on-line.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.acquirecontent.com/titles/dec-professional
>>>>
>>>> Nice little site here:
>>>> http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/Museum/Digital/index.php
>>>>
>>>> click on the Rainbow 100 link near the bottom to see some pictures
>>>> that bring back memories.
>>>>
>>>> How many people on this thread can remember that grinding sound made
>>>> by the floppy drives?
>>>
>>> as a former field service engineer for PC's, terminals and Printers 
>>> (including the DECMate series) I do recall the need to buy the 
>>> DEC-branded floppies (sold a ton of them...)  AND the $2K hard drives.
>> 
>> You people talk like this was unique to DEC.  I also remember things like
>> The instruction to only use "Terak" branded diskettes in the Terak Work-
>> stations we used.  Hmmm....  Let's see, it was an LSI-11/02 and used
>> RX01 and later RX02 formated disks.  And Terak was a dinky little company
>> in Scotsdale who was certainly not manufacturing 8" floppies.  Their
>> drives were vanilla Shugarts.  And yet, we were supposed to believe that
>> anything but a "Terak" branded diskette was not going to work reliably.
>> That was called marketing.  :-)
>> 
>> As for the hard disks.  the DEC branded ones actually went thru some
>> verification process and some of them even had custom firmware which
>> was why you couldn't just take any disk and format it with XXDP.
>> 
>> I was always led to believe that the reason DEC didn't provide formating
>> software was because their early disks, like the RX01 and RX50 hardware
>> was not capable of reliably formating them.  I certainly had no problem
>> formating disks on third party controllers using Shugart and Tandon
>> drives.
>> 
> 
> I expect that the REAL reason was that DEC wanted to sell pre-formatted 
> floppies for $5.00 each when brand-X floppies sold for $0.50 each!

While I have often heard this, the fact that pretty much everyone said
the same thing and none of the computer manufacturers actually made
raw floppies, I tend to put it in the class of "urban legend".  I remember
reading an article back in the 70's that basicly said that all of the
plattens for floppy disks were being manufactured by one company and
they were then badged as the different brands.  Just like the old SS-DS
debate.  The article also claimed all disks were manufactured with oxide
on both sides.  Some compnaies actually verified the surfaces but in general
the manufacturing process was solid enough that the only difference between
SS and DS disks was the postionm of the index hole.  I have used pretty much
all kinds of 8" and 5.25" disks as DS or "flippy" media.

bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>