What was the best floppy drive for early 8 and 16 bit rigs?

[Keatah]

Just as the title says - What was the best floppy drive for early 8 and 16 bit rigs?

 

Some possible candidates would include:

Atari 810

Apple Disk II

CBM 1541

TRS-80 drives

CBM PET drives

Indus GT

RanaSystems I, II, and III

IBM PC 360/1.2 drives

Any 3.5 drive

..and many others that I don't recall off-hand.

 

I vote the Disk II for the Apple II, because of speed and simplicity. Not to mention a whole sub-culture developed around de-protecting protected games. You bought the game, and if so inclined, learned to crack it. Oftentimes that was more satisfying than the game itself. Am I biased? Maybe.

 

 

[MrMaddog]

Want biased? I'll take Atari's drives over anything Commodore made, not only faster but auto boots disk games too...

[mr_me]

Commodore pet floppy drives were fine. The c64/vic20 drives have cost cutting compromises plus a terrible hardware bug that killed its performance.

 

The apple ii floppy was great because it essentially uses the apple ii as the controller. That saved a lot of money in controller hardware. As usual apple didn't pass those savings to its customers.

 

Three and a half inch drives and floppies were ridiculously expensive in the 1980s.

Edited October 9, 2018 by mr_me

[carlsson]

Best mechanism, best interface, best some other property? A few of the 3rd party drives were available for multiple systems, while all the 1st pary drives obviously were exclusive to each brand, though internally they may use similar or the same mechanism.

[Flojomojo]

Sony's auto-injecting 3.5" drives for the Macintosh. Everything else is poopoocaca.

[AMenard]

My vote goes to the Apple DuoDisk for its form factor. A perfect match to the A2 line up to the GS.

My second choice would be the Indus GT for its speed, versatility and of course that rad look.

[Osgeld]

My vote goes to the Apple DuoDisk for its form factor. A perfect match to the A2 line up to the GS.

My second choice would be the Indus GT for its speed, versatility and of course that rad look.

I was about to post duo disk 2 drives 1 cable and gets out of the way

[carlsson]

Besides circumventing copy protection was something done on pretty much all systems, irregardless of which type of drive you had. Or do you mean that Apple II programs using the Disk II are easier to break than programs on other formats?

[krslam]

I was about to post duo disk 2 drives 1 cable and gets out of the way

Its my favorite drive for the Apple II, but the Commodore 4040 stored more per disk, could make backups without tying up the computer, and came out 3 years earlier.

[Keatah]

Commodore pet floppy drives were fine. The c64/vic20 drives have cost cutting compromises plus a terrible hardware bug that killed its performance.

 

I thought the bug was a PCB wiring issue on the c64 itself? And that the VIC-20 had faster access? MAybe I'm mistaken..

 

 

The apple ii floppy was great because it essentially uses the apple ii as the controller. That saved a lot of money in controller hardware. As usual apple didn't pass those savings to its customers.

 

Yes, and it was a good controller, totally software programmable, 48K of RAM and 6502.

[mr_me]

Commodore pet floppy drives used parallel cables. To save money on cables they made it serial for the vic20. They found a hardware bug that a workaround made it more slow. They wanted the c64 drives compatible with the vic20 so it inherited those problems and then the problem mentioned meant another workaround making it even slower.

Edited October 9, 2018 by mr_me

[spacecadet]

I vote IBM PC and its 360k Tandon TM-100-2 drives. They were higher capacity than most, faster than most, and they're basically bulletproof to this day. It's very rare, in my experience, to find a 5150 or 5160 with non-working floppy drives. I don't think I've even heard of belts needing replacement.

 

Most likely the TRS-80's TM-100 drives were similarly reliable (I don't know much about the TRS-80 model 3), but they were single sided so they lose to the PC's drives on that basis.

 

Apple drives were pretty reliable and relatively fast but also stored only 140k. The Commodore 1541 stored 170k but was slow as dirt. The Atari 810 only stored 90k and in my experience, is as durable as cooked spaghetti. (Both of mine broke, including one whose case just shattered during shipping despite a lot of padding around it.) Commodore and Atari drives were also HUGE.

 

I will say that I generally do like drives with spring-loaded close/eject mechanisms like the Atari 810, but it's not enough of a "pro" to outweigh the cons on the drives that have it.

 

3.5" drives are kind of a different animal IMO. At that point, disk drives stopped being really distinct from each other. Some still stored a bit more or less and were maybe a little more or less reliable, but the experience of using them was really similar from one drive to the next.

[Osgeld]

Apple drives were pretty reliable and relatively fast but also stored only 140k.

 

per side same with the commies and others at the time

 

the PC drives were double sided, so you did not have to flip the disk, it did hold more, but not a huge amount more than an apple II (280k per disk) or a C64 (340K per disk) with its hard sectored 360K format

[carlsson]

Also both the Apple and Commodore drives used 35 tracks per side, while the IBM uses 40 tracks as far as I can tell. The 1541 was possible to extend up to 42 tracks, though I don't know how reliable it was. I don't know if one has to extend the directory & BAM track, but in any case it should give well over 185K per side in extended mode.

Edited October 10, 2018 by carlsson

[warpman]

Percom external disk drive and controller for the TI-99/4a. Absolutely magical.

[BassGuitari]

It could just be my imagination, but the 8" drive in the TRS-80 Model II is blazingly fast, relatively speaking. And with almost 500K, those disks are practically like miniature portable floppy hard drives compared to the 5.25" formats on other systems.

 

My runner-up would probably be the Disk II. Fast, rugged, fairly light weight, doesn't require its own power supply, and good-looking to boot. (HA!) I tend to like full-height drives in general, although I've had to repair the latches on a few of them.

 

The Commodore 1541...hmm. Definitely on the slow side--possibly the slowest of any '70s/'80s disk system I've used--but fortunately I can't say reliability has been much of an issue in my experience. Most of the read errors I encounter can be chalked up to bad disks. However, they're bulky, they need their own power cables, and they don't stack especially well thanks to that slight downward slope toward the front of the unit. JiffyDOS and/or a fast loader cartridge is basically a requirement. Still, I love the thing. No accounting for taste, right?