Adam Disk Drive

[jeremysart]

How rare were the Adam 5 1/4 Disk Drives?

I can never find them.

What kind of software was even compatible with it?

[doubledown]

They are pretty uncommon as not many were sold due to the ADAM's short life span, and the obsceneley high price tag for them at retail. There isn't a lot of software for the ADAM period, and I believe only Dragon's Lair, and Zaxxon were the only commerically released games available on disk. A lot of the utility type programs were available on disk comercially, and most of the DDP games can be converted for use on disk. Which provides substantially faster loading times, and less chance of media destruction caused by a high speed DDD. From my experience I "guaranteed working" 5-1/4" drive with power supply, and ADAMNet cable will run you between $60-$100. More if it includes the Disk Manager disk, manual, and or packaging.

 

I was luky enough myself to get a total of 4 of them all reasonably priced, but partially becuase 2 of them were "untested". Both of those had initial problems when I got them, but I was able to fix them with little to no problems.

[jeremysart]

Thanks for the info.

Even if I could find an "as-is" with the power cable that would be nice.

It would be pretty nice to back up my DDP games on 5 1/4, I much prefer the floppy over the cassettes.

[WilsonCat]

I still kick myself for selling my Adam setup. I had the 5 1/4 drive and I remember being able to back up cartridges and DDD to the floppy disks. Pretty cool at the time!

[gamerz]

I still kick myself for selling my Adam setup. I had the 5 1/4 drive and I remember being able to back up cartridges and DDD to the floppy disks. Pretty cool at the time!

 

Me too, I had the 5 1/4 drive and a 300 baud modem for my Adam.

[desiv]

I still kick myself for selling my Adam setup. I had the 5 1/4 drive and I remember being able to back up cartridges and DDD to the floppy disks. Pretty cool at the time!

 

Of course, the Data Packs are what, 256K, and the floppy is 160K. I think it was Basic I had trouble with, because it wouldn't (at least initially, I can't remember if I got it) fit on a floppy and run.

 

I never tried to back up the carts. Hmmm... I don't have many, but a few..

 

desiv

[WilsonCat]

Yeah...I actually remember a program that backed it up and self booted the games right from the floppys. I don't remember what it was.

[Murph74]

Yeah...I actually remember a program that backed it up and self booted the games right from the floppys. I don't remember what it was.

 

There was a simple one on Hacker's Guide to Adam, but the most common one with menus and all was "MMSG Cart Copy+" I think.

[jeremysart]

 

There was a simple one on Hacker's Guide to Adam, but the most common one with menus and all was "MMSG Cart Copy+" I think.

 

Wow, that would be a pretty useful program to have. Was this on DDP or Floppy?

[Inky]

There was a simple one on Hacker's Guide to Adam, but the most common one with menus and all was "MMSG Cart Copy+" I think.

 

Wow, that would be a pretty useful program to have. Was this on DDP or Floppy?

 

Both. IIRC it was a public domain program.

[Tempest]

That's the beauty of the ADAM library. 95% of it is public domain now.

 

Tempest

[coleconut]

How rare were the Adam 5 1/4 Disk Drives?

I can never find them.

What kind of software was even compatible with it?

 

OK I am biting the bullet and put a tested working drive up on Ebay.

Starting price $1

[Murph74]

There was a simple one on Hacker's Guide to Adam, but the most common one with menus and all was "MMSG Cart Copy+" I think.

 

Wow, that would be a pretty useful program to have. Was this on DDP or Floppy?

 

Both. IIRC it was a public domain program.

 

Neither WERE public domain to my knowledge-- the MMSG cost me $14.95 I think. You'd boot it, select a target media, it would format it to be self booting, then then you could 'dump' physical cartridges to it is how I recall it working. The Hacker's Guide program was similar, but had a lot more limitations as far as the carts it could copy, and wasn't nearly as 'pretty' or fast to boot.

[Bruce Tomlin]

So what about making a floppy drive emulator? (SD card or PC, it doesn't matter) Just program a modern microcontroller to talk on AdamNet, and claim to be a big floppy drive. I'd be surprised if someone already hasn't made one.

 

I've got a schematic of the CPU side of the Adam floppy, did anyone ever get a dump of the code? (I am aware that it was a mask ROM inside the CPU, which makes it a bit harder than it would be otherwise.) There's also supposed to be AdamNet source code out there, but I couldn't find it with fifteen minutes or so of searching.

 

Of course reading an actual Adam floppy is trivial to anyone with a Catweasel, since it's just standard single-density sectors.