----- Original Message -----
From: "Tony Firshman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: [ql-users] CDROM driver for Q40/Q60 and Qubide
> On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 at 07:49:27, Peter S Tillier wrote:
> (ref: <005f01c1198c$f25299e0$5c16989e@btclick>)
>
> >Well it was designed to cope with a terrible mass-storage medium! It's a
> >pity that Sir Clive didn't put a single floppy into the QL instead of the
> >microdrives with an adequate power supply he would have sold millions.
And
> >there would have been (less/no) need for the slave blocks.
> IIRC when the QL was being developed, the std drives were 5.25 - and
> about 45cm high. That clearly was not on. Even the first 3.5 drives
> were too large.
>
> It was just not possible at the time - a few years later, yes.
Hi Tony,
Yes, but even a 5.25" in the same case with the other h/w wouldn't
necessarily have killed it off. For example, the BBC Micro didn't have a
disk drive at all and was much larger. Admittedly the QL would have been
larger if it included a 5.25" drive, but could still have been fairly
compact when compared to the alternatives, like the IBM-PC of the time, if
the power supply had been external.
I just think it's a shame that such a good OS and machine failed to catch on
because of a few feet of narrow video tape: even though microdrives could be
tweaked to work well (as in the OPD and Tonto) they often didn't in the QL.
I never had any problems with them in my Spectrum MDVs, but lots with the
QL, so I moved to floppies as soon as I could - although I still have one
machine that's MDV-only just for testing/nostalgia purposes.
Peter
--
Peter S Tillier [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my employer
