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What makes the Indus GT drive so expensive...


Scooter83

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I was following this drive on ebay and the price for it kinda blew me outta the water $106.00+

 

http://rover.ebay.com/rover/1/711-53200-19255-0/1?ff3=4&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&mpre=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fitm%2F171055799262%3FssPageName%3DSTRK%3AMEWAX%3AIT%26_trksid%3Dp3984.m1438.l2649

 

 

Is there a reason why this is going for that much ( Outside of people are just bidding alot ). Is there a reason why this is a better drive than say the Atari 810, 1050 or other 3rd party brands? Didnt know if there was something else to this drive that makes it really special when compared to other drives of the era.

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Like he said... it was a top of the line drive with a lot of features. And there were not as many Indus GT drives in circulation as 810s.

 

and that ebay auction had everything included with the working drive. For a collector its worth the $106.

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I was following this drive on ebay and the price for it kinda blew me outta the water $106.00+

 

http://rover.ebay.co...984.m1438.l2649

 

 

Is there a reason why this is going for that much ( Outside of people are just bidding alot ). Is there a reason why this is a better drive than say the Atari 810, 1050 or other 3rd party brands? Didnt know if there was something else to this drive that makes it really special when compared to other drives of the era.

 

Out of the box, SSDD, no modification required and you got 180k instead of Atari 1050 143k or a warranty voiding after market mod$ to get to 180k.

 

IMO: You really needed that warranty with the 1050 as the design and materials were lacking. If you read the forums, you will find dozens of messages about failed belts, track zero sensors, and on board 12V convertor. There were a lot of failures due to ICs and chip transistor arrays.

 

The 1050 is almost an Atari VCS with the TIA replaced with a floppy controller; uses a 6507 with a total of 256 bytes of memory for reading a track and program use.

 

The Indus uses a Z80 and industry standard drive mechanism. IIRC the high speed mode had trouble but I was running Sparta at the time and didn't have any problems. There were LED readouts with track information so if you would keep an eye on the track readout, you could tell where copy protection and failing tracks were located. The door made for a good dust proof enclosure for your floppy. Think about the 1050 with bare drive inside a plastic case filled with vent holes! This was just plain a bad idea. If you live anywhere outside of a clean room, leaving a disk inside a 1050 when you aren't using it is a bad idea, almost the same as leaving it sitting on top of your desk without a jacket. Sound levels are much improved on the Indus. If you have an Indus and 1050 side by side doing something like running a BBS, the 1050 comes across as the annoying ugly sister. 1050s moan and groan as they they spin up and try to find a piece of data where the Indus just quietly does its job while letting you know somethings happening and where with the front panel display.

 

Its really an esoteric experience. I mean if you are running a BBS, you see the track readout and can say, "Track 24, they must be accessing the message base." Ditto for running copy protected software, you see it read on the same track 3 times while SIO misses a beat and say to yourself, "there be the copy protection."

 

,

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Pretty complete set of responses, so far.

 

I could only add that, owning 810s, 1050s and Indus-GTs, there is simply no substitute to the design, overall quality and operation of the Indus-GT.

 

Even today, it simply looks sick, with its stylish / (relatively) compact footpring, sitting on any desk, with its smoked / plexy-glass door awaiting to be opened, just to reveal its nice array of gizmos and controls. It also runs noticeable cooler / gentler than prior drives, and relatively silent, too.

 

Install the RamCharger (64K expansion) and CP/M utilities, and you not only have the utlimate 5.25" drive for Atari 8Bit series, but yet another computing platform altogether (Z80-based CP/M).

 

Enjoy!

Edited by Faicuai
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I got the AMDEK 3" floppy for Atari not 3.5" but 3" it's nice but was hard to find the floppy's ....

 

amdekih7.jpg

 

This drive is more rare the the Indus GT I got 2 of them and I own a XFD602 drive (also rare I think) Percom AT88 and RANA drives...

The Indus GT was nice looking I think the best of all and ofcourse the CPM option was a bonus aswell.

Edited by TXG/MNX
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The Indus GT is not the ultimate 5.25" drive for the 8-bit series.. Not even close.. as far as what you can actually do where manipulating disks is concerned, the Happy and Superarchiver 1050s blow it totally away. Not to mention the fact that the XF551 is double sided and there are upgrades for that drive as well that give it capabilities far beyond the Indus.. Not to say the Indus isnt a nice peice of gear for it's day.. But it never recieved 1/10th the support that the popular upgraded atari drives did..

 

I'd say the reason they dont sell dirt cheap is that there just arent that many of them out there compared to stock atari drives.. And compared to a stock atari drive, it's a much better and more capable device..

 

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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The Indus GT is not the ultimate 5.25" drive for the 8-bit series.. Not even close.. as far as what you can actually do where manipulating disks is concerned, the Happy and Superarchiver 1050s blow it totally away. Not to mention the fact that the XF551 is double sided and there are upgrades for that drive as well that give it capabilities far beyond the Indus.. Not to say the Indus isnt a nice peice of gear for it's day.. But it never recieved 1/10th the support that the popular upgraded atari drives did..

 

I'd say the reason they dont sell dirt cheap is that there just arent that many of them out there compared to stock atari drives.. And compared to a stock atari drive, it's a much better and more capable device..

 

Hi I meant more that the Indus GT has the best look of all :-D and the CPM option is special.

 

I do have most upgrades like Speedy, Speedy XF , Archiver 810/1050, Happy, Turbo and more...

For speed I mostly use the Speedy 1050 drives but with the IDE interfaces and Blackboxes around and ofcourse the SDcard readers the floppydrives will eat more dust these days...

To bad... I miss to days...

 

I even miss the days I only had a 16Kb 600XL with 1010 datarecorder and did save and load on tape listening to all the slow beeps... :P

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Hi I meant more that the Indus GT has the best look of all :-D and the CPM option is special.

The ATR8000 didn't look as good, but it was more expandable. You could connect up to 4 drives to it, and it could also run CPM like the Indus GT.

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The ATR8000 didn't look as good, but it was more expandable. You could connect up to 4 drives to it, and it could also run CPM like the Indus GT.

 

Okay did forget that big metal beast ;-) got one overhere bought it many years ago but never really used it. But this a device that can connect drives aswell when that counts a KARIN PBI interface and BlackBox floppyboard are also added to the list.

(The floppyboard is the only board I don't have ....)

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I'd like an Indus GT for the express purpose of running CP/M.... an ATR8000 would be pretty awesome too I guess.

 

Isn't extra hardware required to run CP/M on an Indus drive though? Like a RAMCharger board? Can those be had anywhere these days?

 

This may be of interest to those with working CP/M setups:

 

http://z80cpu.eu/mirrors/oldcomputers.dyndns.org/mirror/oakcpm2/cpm/

 

If you can transfer files between CP/M and Atari drives, should be pretty easy to transfer files using SIO2PC.

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Hi I meant more that the Indus GT has the best look of all :-D and the CPM option is special.

 

I do have most upgrades like Speedy, Speedy XF , Archiver 810/1050, Happy, Turbo and more...

 

(...)

 

 

Not just the best looks, native Z80-based CP/M support (the RamCharger is needed, though, but is just a small plug-and-play card that requires virtually no dissassembly).

 

It is more about the wholeness of the IndusGT formula, its quality, and its inherent/raw potential. For instance, it is already capable of outputting 50+ Kbps with its native HW/CPU config, and no other upgrade needed... with half the heat, a lot less noise, less power drawn, and with a style-to-boot.

 

It is like comparing a riced-up, noisy, high-revving Honda (1050+upgrades) vs. a Ferrari F430 (IndusGT). It is not just supply-and-demand what commands its price, though.

 

Enjoy!

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Except that as an atari disk drive, the Happy 1050 actually far out-does the Indus, and there arent many upgraded Hondas that will out-do many Ferarris as a car.

 

The CP/M is a nice novelty. Theres literally a small handful of useful software that can run on it. As others have said, the ATR8000 or even a C=128 is much better equipped as a CP/M machine, and theres damn few useful applications for those.. But it is kewl that they included that functionality since they could.

 

I also like the track/status display on the front of the Indus. However, the fact is that as a disk manipulation device, the Happy 1050 far outdoes the Indus. ALot of this is largely due to software (crack tool) support, but there are hardware features that differ as well. On any disk other than ones formatted by the Indus in "synchromesh" mode, the Happy 1050 is quite a bit faster.

 

And lastly, the indus looks really kewl as a standalone unit.. But the 1050 matches the XL line styling. The XF matches the XE line of styling.. What generation of Atari equipment does the Indus match? Would look pretty consistant with a 5200 maybe.. Just thought I'd throw that in.. My stuff is so mismatched, I really cant claim that I have anything resembling a "matching" set of hardware..

 

The bottom line is that the Indus is worth more money because it's relatively rare, and better than a stock drive.

Edited by MEtalGuy66
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Except that as an atari disk drive, the Happy 1050 actually far out-does the Indus, and there arent many upgraded Hondas that will out-do many Ferarris as a car.

 

The CP/M is a nice novelty. Theres literally a small handful of useful software that can run on it. As others have said, the ATR8000 or even a C=128 is much better equipped as a CP/M machine, and theres damn few useful applications for those.. But it is kewl that they included that functionality since they could.

 

I also like the track/status display on the front of the Indus. However, the fact is that as a disk manipulation device, the Happy 1050 far outdoes the Indus. ALot of this is largely due to software (crack tool) support, but there are hardware features that differ as well. On any disk other than ones formatted by the Indus in "synchromesh" mode, the Happy 1050 is quite a bit faster.

 

And lastly, the indus looks really kewl as a standalone unit.. But the 1050 matches the XL line styling. The XF matches the XE line of styling.. What generation of Atari equipment does the Indus match? Would look pretty consistant with a 5200 maybe.. Just thought I'd throw that in.. My stuff is so mismatched, I really cant claim that I have anything resembling a "matching" set of hardware..

 

The bottom line is that the Indus is worth more money because it's relatively rare, and better than a stock drive.

 

The only thing a Happy does better is defeat copy protected software. It's done its job and there are no more hills to climb. Your CP/M observation hold true for that feature of the Happy. All the problems with voiding warranty, reliability, noise, heat, track zero sensors, are still there. You still can't run a Happy 1050 in a dust cover unless you want it to melt. It's OK to make a value judgement based on your own needs but a famous Atari wag said 'less then 5% of the people who owned an Atari programmed on it." I talked with him maybe five years after that statement and he said he was probably optimistic, the real number was probably 2%. Now deduct from that the number of people capable of doing the hardware modification and you will see you<we?> are really one in a 100 if not one in 1000.

 

Think about it: If back in the day someone asked you, "I want to run [small office, programming environment, BBS, ...] would you tell them to buy a 1050 and a Happy or for the same money buy two Indus GTs? The truth is, if a non programmer asked me today for a reliable drive that they didn't have to tinker with, I'd still recommend the Indus. If someone asked me "How to I defeat copy protection?" I would tell them to buy a Happy.

 

Yes, CP/M was probably the most boring OS ever written. Unfortunately back then<pre IBM/MS wide spread adoption> it was the OS used by most of the good productivity software. If you spent half of your time at work using WordStar, you stuck with it. It had a good suite of productivity software and I've heard some people still use it as a development program for embedded Z80 derivatives. I still have a couple of CP/M systems laying around and I haven't tried to boot them in the last 20 years. A note of trivia, SIO2PC was not the first software of its type. SIO2CP/M came first. I recall seeing an advertisement for it an Atari Magazine and Kyle Dain demo'ed it for me years later.

 

Now as a hardware guy, if I asked you for an engineering decision between two choices.

 

1) Let's use an AC transformer that has such a low voltage output that we have to put a voltage doubler inside the drive and both 12V and 5V regulators

or

2) Let's use a regulated 12 power supply and just have a 5V regulator inside the drive

 

Which would you choose? I mean even with switching from a 9VAC transformer to 10VAC would eliminate the need for the voltage doubler.

 

Modified is modified. Nobody ever did it, but the Indus had a 2k RAM chip stock. If someone was dedicated, they could rewrite the Indus ROM for Happy functions. About the only thing you couldn't do is full track buffering. I'd imagine you could could do all the same disk monkey business under CP/M on an expanded Indus.

 

Of course all of this is academic now. SIO2USB makes everything else including the Indus and Happy drives obsolete.

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I got the AMDEK 3" floppy for Atari not 3.5" but 3" it's nice but was hard to find the floppy's ....

 

amdekih7.jpg

 

This drive is more rare the the Indus GT I got 2 of them and I own a XFD602 drive (also rare I think) Percom AT88 and RANA drives...

The Indus GT was nice looking I think the best of all and ofcourse the CPM option was a bonus aswell.

I remember drooling over an ad an/or review of those in ANTIC. They were never sold over her and shortly thereafter I got a Mega ST. My dad had an Amstrad with 3" drives in the office and they seemed to be far sturdier than their 3,5" cousins. I never saw a split 3" cover.....

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Except that as an atari disk drive, the Happy 1050 actually far out-does the Indus, and there arent many upgraded Hondas that will out-do many Ferarris as a car.

 

I wouldn't say *FAR* but I like my Happy 1050. The Indus is a better drive in some respects.

 

The CP/M is a nice novelty. Theres literally a small handful of useful software that can run on it. As others have said, the ATR8000 or even a C=128 is much better equipped as a CP/M machine, and theres damn few useful applications for those.. But it is kewl that they included that functionality since they could.

 

Novelty? Betcha more CP/M systems were sold than Atari 8-bits. Remember, DOZENS of folks sold mutant CP/M boxes. WordStar, DBase II, SuperCalc, BASCOM, MS BASIC that doesn't suck.... all with nice 80-column support. Before DOS was big on desktops, CP/M was king of the business microcomputer world. Journalists liked the portables as well.

 

CP/M machines also usually had 52-column or better text displays too. Better for boring business apps than stock Atari.

 

There were all-in-one portables, small desktops, S-100 crates.... CP/M was around a while. The biggest problem (other than the PC and MS buying a cheap CP/M clone for x86) was the fact that disk formats were INSANELY incompatible from machine to machine. Made distributing software to the whole CP/M audience frustrating.

 

The *ONLY* A8 DOS that can give CP/M a run for its money is SpartaDOS X.

 

On any disk other than ones formatted by the Indus in "synchromesh" mode, the Happy 1050 is quite a bit faster.

 

I'm sure a third party board could be made for the Indus to speed it up considerably as well. The Indus GT spanked a STOCK 1050 when it was new. That is what counted then. Don't think the Happy Board was even around at that point yet.

 

But the 1050 matches the XL line styling. The XF matches the XE line of styling.. What generation of Atari equipment does the Indus match?

 

Does your external USB hard drive resemble the style of your PC case?

 

The bottom line is that the Indus is worth more money because it's relatively rare, and better than a stock drive.

 

Yup.

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The *ONLY* A8 DOS that can give CP/M a run for its money is SpartaDOS X.

 

I recall immeasurable frustration in college IT classes that used CP/M. If one made the mistake of switching floppy disks in an attempt to re-save a (BASIC) program or file to another disk, it would make the CP/M system refuse to do anything more with the floppy disk drive requiring a reboot. I remember the screaming in the lab when someone did that and lost hours of work.

 

So, I think even Atari DOS 1.0 was a much better deal than CP/M's lame disk handling.

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I recall immeasurable frustration in college IT classes that used CP/M. If one made the mistake of switching floppy disks in an attempt to re-save a (BASIC) program or file to another disk, it would make the CP/M system refuse to do anything more with the floppy disk drive requiring a reboot.

 

Strange.... I used to do that all the time under CP/M 2.2 on my Osborne I without issues. What version of CP/M? My grandfather never had that problem on his KayPro II either.

 

So, I think even Atari DOS 1.0 was a much better deal than CP/M's lame disk handling.

 

Like I said.... I've used CP/M quite a bit and never had that issue.

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Strange.... I used to do that all the time under CP/M 2.2 on my Osborne I without issues. What version of CP/M? My grandfather never had that problem on his KayPro II either.

 

This was before version 2x. The college IT dept used Apple IIs with a card in it for running CP/M. It was horrible. Twice so considering this was 1985. The rest of the classes used a nice multi-user unix systems.

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I wouldn't say *FAR* but I like my Happy 1050. The Indus is a better drive in some respects.

It's faster and does alot more where custom disk formats and copy protected disks are concerned, and it's features are much better supported in software.

 

Novelty? Betcha more CP/M systems were sold than Atari 8-bits. Remember, DOZENS of folks sold mutant CP/M boxes. WordStar, DBase II, SuperCalc, BASCOM, MS BASIC that doesn't suck.... all with nice 80-column support. Before DOS was big on desktops, CP/M was king of the business microcomputer world. Journalists liked the portables as well.

Yeah.. CP/M running on a disk drive, using atari as a terminal is a novelty. Noone is talking about desktop CP/M machines.

 

CP/M machines also usually had 52-column or better text displays too. Better for boring business apps than stock Atari.

 

There were all-in-one portables, small desktops, S-100 crates.... CP/M was around a while. The biggest problem (other than the PC and MS buying a cheap CP/M clone for x86) was the fact that disk formats were INSANELY incompatible from machine to machine. Made distributing software to the whole CP/M audience frustrating.

 

The *ONLY* A8 DOS that can give CP/M a run for its money is SpartaDOS X.

Ok.. I'm well aware of the capabilities of CP/M. We were talking ATARI disk drives here. CP/M runing on an Indus (or ATR8000) cant do shit as far as utilizing hardware features of the atari. So you cant even compare it to SDX where the atari is concerned. You cant run atari native apps from CP/M.

 

I'm sure a third party board could be made for the Indus to speed it up considerably as well.

The indus is a third party device to begin with and they did make expansion boards for it.

The Indus GT spanked a STOCK 1050 when it was new. That is what counted then. Don't think the Happy Board was even around at that point yet.

And that, my friend is exactly what I said. And theres also fewer Indus Drives than 1050s out there.. Those were the two points I made relating to the higher pricepoint of Indus drives than 1050s these days.

 

Does your external USB hard drive resemble the style of your PC case?

No and most external hardives for any 8bit system did not either.. However, My 1050 mathces my XL.. 810 matches the 400/800. XF551 matches the XE.. Apple Disk II mathes the Apple II+/IIe.. Commodore 1541 matches the C64. The point I was supporting with this was that the Indus is not "The Ultimate Atari Disk Drive"..
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