doctor_x Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 So first just a little bit of psychology... normally when I'm happy and things are going well and I visit here or anywhere else atari related, I get all sad and blue because I miss that era so much and know that nothing in the future will come close to being that cool. but I've had some things happen in the past few weeks that have made me pretty low - and being here tonight has made me feel a little better... I guess maybe I've sort of allowed those memories no matter how re-creatable they are, lift me a little...... anyway.. ahem... so on the back page of alot of antic/analog magazines, and elsewhere - you would see this ad with an 800xl, an AMDEK color monitor, and this smooth little dual drive 3.5 looking disk drive.... I actually owned the Tandy version of this drive for one day before someone emailed me and offered me double what I paid for it and I sold it..... I did a search here first, and it appears the only Amdek related topics dealt with the monitors..... Since hard disk space for people running BBS's and stuff was such a premium, I would have figured these things would have taken off. Maybe they were high priced - maybe the "pseudo" 3.5 media was not reliable... Or maybe it was only found on the back page of magazines and never released. Since this is a topic not yet touched here I wondered if anyone might enjoy sharing some banter in reference to this piece of hardware, and maybe help lift my spirits even higher.... Hope all of you are well this evening.. Doc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joeventura Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 (edited) So first just a little bit of psychology... normally when I'm happy and things are going well and I visit here or anywhere else atari related, I get all sad and blue because I miss that era so much and know that nothing in the future will come close to being that cool. but I've had some things happen in the past few weeks that have made me pretty low - and being here tonight has made me feel a little better... I guess maybe I've sort of allowed those memories no matter how re-creatable they are, lift me a little...... anyway.. ahem... so on the back page of alot of antic/analog magazines, and elsewhere - you would see this ad with an 800xl, an AMDEK color monitor, and this smooth little dual drive 3.5 looking disk drive.... I actually owned the Tandy version of this drive for one day before someone emailed me and offered me double what I paid for it and I sold it..... I did a search here first, and it appears the only Amdek related topics dealt with the monitors..... Since hard disk space for people running BBS's and stuff was such a premium, I would have figured these things would have taken off. Maybe they were high priced - maybe the "pseudo" 3.5 media was not reliable... Or maybe it was only found on the back page of magazines and never released. Since this is a topic not yet touched here I wondered if anyone might enjoy sharing some banter in reference to this piece of hardware, and maybe help lift my spirits even higher.... Hope all of you are well this evening.. Doc That would be the Amdek 3" (not 3 1/2") disk drive pictured This drive pre-dates the Sony 3 1/2 inch floppy, the 3" disks were double sided, but not the way you would think, you used one side, then flipped it over and used the other side They were referred to as 3" flippys I actually owned one of these but I can't recall if it attached to my Atari directly or to my ATR8000 Here is an actual picture of the disk (flippy) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...pact_Floppy.jpg It had an A and B side and when you inserted it the metal cover rotated away from the hole. Edited October 13, 2007 by joeventura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR> Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 (edited) I picked up one of these several years ago, but it had previously been converted to dual SS 3.5" drives. The controller board in these is actually quite nice. It can control up to 4 floppy drives in just about any combination of single or double density, single or double sided and 40 or 80 track. It also supports enhanced density. There is a switch that will swap the ID's of the first 2 drives with the second 2. This was so you could connect one or two 5.25 drives externally and then be able to easily boot from either the 3" drive or a normal 5.25" drive. The drives are addressed sequentially and can start at any address from D1-D4 so standard Atari drives can be used in combination with the Amdek drives. The contoller also contains a printer port. Edited October 13, 2007 by JR> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_x Posted October 13, 2007 Author Share Posted October 13, 2007 did it have an SIO cable? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR> Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 did it have an SIO cable? Yes, it has 2 standard SIO ports in back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_x Posted October 13, 2007 Author Share Posted October 13, 2007 does it require any special OS, or does it work with DOS 2.0/2.5? Also... is there anywhere in which you can find the media any longer? What did you pay for yours (just curious)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JR> Posted October 13, 2007 Share Posted October 13, 2007 (edited) does it require any special OS, or does it work with DOS 2.0/2.5? Also... is there anywhere in which you can find the media any longer? What did you pay for yours (just curious)? Despite the oddball media, it still used standard disk formats so it would work with any dos that supported the particular format. The 3" media were Single Sided Double density 80 track just like 3.5's. The manual states that it included a copy of DOSXL on one 3" disk and a second 3" disk with some utilities for configuring the drive, but I didn't get these and have never seen the utilities archived anywhere. I have never seen one of the original 3" disks, since mine had already been converted to 3.5 and did not come with any. I have since seen a couple of the drives for sale that included a few of the disks, but that is the only place I have ever seen them available. It looks like I payed $25 shipped back in 2000. Edited October 13, 2007 by JR> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doctor_x Posted October 14, 2007 Author Share Posted October 14, 2007 $25???? wow... I think that guy who bought the one for the TRS from me paid me like $360... damn... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Curt Vendel Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 If anyone needs disks, I have some spares I can sell/trade. They can be pre-formatted with DOS XL or MyDOS if needed. Curt $25???? wow... I think that guy who bought the one for the TRS from me paid me like $360... damn... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
re-atari Posted October 14, 2007 Share Posted October 14, 2007 I picked up one of these several years ago, but it had previously been converted to dual SS 3.5" drives. The controller board in these is actually quite nice. It can control up to 4 floppy drives in just about any combination of single or double density, single or double sided and 40 or 80 track. It also supports enhanced density. There is a switch that will swap the ID's of the first 2 drives with the second 2. This was so you could connect one or two 5.25 drives externally and then be able to easily boot from either the 3" drive or a normal 5.25" drive. The drives are addressed sequentially and can start at any address from D1-D4 so standard Atari drives can be used in combination with the Amdek drives. The contoller also contains a printer port. It would be interesting to see the internals of this drive... Any chance of posting a couple of hires photo's? re-atari Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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