Brand new, Boxed, Unused Quick Data Drives (Phonemark) for Commodore 64 / VIC20 - Free to a Good Home!
Tim Fardell
I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
I would rather these go to an enthusiast who will treasure them and
actually do something useful with them, so advertising them here
before listing them on eBay.
The drives have always been stored in their original factory
packaging, indoors at room temperature and should be in excellent
condition.
I'm basically just asking for cost of postage, but note that I'm in
the United Kingdom and International postage could be expensive.
Any interest?
--
Please remove all-your-clothes before replying.
Steven Hirsch
> Hello all.
>
> I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
What differentiates these units from, e.g. 1541s?
Tim Fardell
wrote:
They use a continuous-loop tape cartridge instead of a disk.
Some more info here:
http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/cip/category/datassette/quick_data_drive
I believe they use the same cartridges as the "Wafadrive" system for
the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, and I apparently the drive mechanisms are
exactly the same (though the electronics are obviously different).
AFAIK, the format never really caught on for either platform, though
it had slightly more success on the Spectrum, and a few games were
even released on "Wafas".
The "Quick Data Drive" was presumably an unsuccessful attempt to
capture the Commodore user market.
Webster
What will shipping with tracking cost to the US? If it isn't too
expensive I would like one. Will you take paypal?
Thanks
Christian Brandt
> The "Quick Data Drive" was presumably an unsuccessful attempt to
> capture the Commodore user market.
Wow, thats a curiosity: Quickdrives for C64!
Yes, you are right, the Quickdrives (sold under that name in germany)
are pretty weird and well hated in the Sinclair world. Sinclair hadn't
had any disk drives for years but instead offered these continuous-loop
tape drives instead. They were slow, seek-times were around 40-60
seconds, had little space and were sold pretty expensive. But you had no
choice in the sinclair market as even the 68008 Sinclair QL came with
Quickdrives. Two of them.
Most of the very few sinclair users I know have bought and used CBM1541
connected to their spectrums and even QLs. I still have one CBM1541
formatted disk with spectrum software around.
Weird folks those speccy users and they really had a very high pain
treshold.
Christian Brandt
Joe Forster/STA
> seconds, had little space and were sold pretty expensive.
The info page, quoted in a previous page, says the tapes had sizes
between 16 and 128 kbytes and had a transfer speed of 2 kbytes/sec so
the largest tape should be read through in 64 seconds. Does this mean
that seeking was actually not faster than reading/writing? Weird.
Paul E Collins
> AFAIK, the [Wafadrive] format never really caught on for either platform,
> though it had slightly more success on the Spectrum, and a few games were
> even released on "Wafas".
Hmm, which games? Is there a standard modern format for these? I've never
seen any Wafadrive versions on World of Spectrum, and I don't think I've
come across emulator support either.
Eq.
Andrew Halliwell
Thing you've got to remember about seeking is, if you're even one BYTE into
the file you want, the entire loop of tape has to go through the machine
before you can start to read it. Seek time on sinclair microdrives had a
similar problem, tough usually it was a lot less... 20 seconds tops unless
there were bad sectors and re-read attempts (which could take ages).
--
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| | graphical shell for a 16 bit patch to an 8 bit |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc | operating system originally coded for a 4 bit |
| in |microprocessor, written by a 2 bit company, that|
| Computer Science | can't stand 1 bit of competition. |
Andrew Halliwell
I certainly don't recall any adverts saying "Also available on wafadrive".
Not even on the wafadrive adverts themselves.
--
| spi...@freenet.co,uk | "Are you pondering what I'm pondering Pinky?" |
| Andrew Halliwell BSc | |
| in | "I think so brain, but this time, you control |
| Computer Science | the Encounter suit, and I'll do the voice..." |
Tim Fardell
> Tim Fardell wrote:
> >
> > I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> > branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
> >
> What will shipping with tracking cost to the US? If it isn't too
> expensive I would like one. Will you take paypal?
OK, I have reserved one for you. I will get a shipping quote and let you
know a.s.a.p.
Yes, PayPal is fine.
Tim Fardell
> Paul E Collins <find_my_re...@cl4.org> wrote:
> > "Tim Fardell" <tim.fardell.al...@virgin.net> wrote:
> >
> >> AFAIK, the [Wafadrive] format never really caught on for either platform,
> >> though it had slightly more success on the Spectrum, and a few games were
> >> even released on "Wafas".
> >
> > Hmm, which games? Is there a standard modern format for these? I've never
> > seen any Wafadrive versions on World of Spectrum, and I don't think I've
> > come across emulator support either.
>
> I certainly don't recall any adverts saying "Also available on wafadrive".
> Not even on the wafadrive adverts themselves.
This place:
http://www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d45.html
appears to have three Wafadrive games for sale: Mugsy, Nightflight and
Starbike. They have pictures as well to prove it, so it looks like at
least three games were released on the Wafadrive format.
scifi-man
Hello,
I would like one. Please send a bill. Do you take paypal?
Charlie
Tim Fardell
> On Mar 8, 2:23 pm, Tim Fardell <tim.fardell.all-your-
> clot...@virgin.net> wrote:
> >
> > I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> > branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
>
> Hello,
> I would like one. Please send a bill. Do you take paypal?
> Charlie
OK, Sold! If you can let me know where you are I will get a shipping quote
and let you know the cost. (I'm guessing Canada?)
Yes, PayPal is fine.
That's the last one provisionally gone now - no more available.
Thanks all!
Tim Fardell
> I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
All provisionally gone, for now.
Some may become available again when people discover how much the shipping
cost is going to be :-)
Paul E Collins
> This place:
> http://www.dataserve-retro.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d45.html
> appears to have three Wafadrive games for sale: Mugsy, Nightflight and
> Starbike. They have pictures as well to prove it, so it looks like at
> least three games were released on the Wafadrive format.
I've found another one: Hewson's "Seiddab Trilogy". Interesting!
Eq.
Johnny B Good
<af32037b-31e6-4d1d...@a12g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
from "Joe Forster/STA" <s...@c64.org> contains these words:
My first home computer was a kit built ZX80 back in, afaicr, 1981. I
designed and built my own 3KB srampack before I flogged it on about a
year later to finance an upgrade from this 'toy' to a real computer, the
almost unheard of Transam Tuscan S100 Bus computer (again, bought in kit
form for almost double its headline price of 150 quid (plus VAT).
The real price was nearly doubled on account of the cost of the extra
chips to populate the video section and the indispensable hardware and
software manuals :-(
About 1982/3 I got hold of three or four Philips cassette data drives.
These were bare mechanisms, devoid of any electronics. They were
intended to be used with slightly modified C60 data cassette tapes and
had twin, contra rotating capstans with individually solenoid actuated
pinch wheels so they could read/write in either direction, along with a
solenoid operated three position head engagement mechanism (this allowed
the ferrite/ceramic heads to be partially advanced to make light contact
with the tape during fast forward and reverse operations) and take up
and supply motors directly driving the 'reel table' spindles via a
spring cushion drive linkage.
After testing, I designed and built interface circuitboards to allow my
Transam Tuscan S100 Bus computer to fully control all features of their
operation. The heads had a large gapped 'erase' section as well as the
usual 1 micron gapped read/write section. I made use of the large gapped
erase head to detect the very long wavelength interblock pulses during
fast winding seek operations which allowed me to to reduce worst case
seek time to a mere 14 seconds on a C60 cassette.
Due to the need to use an over-writing technique, sans erase and HF
bias normal to an audio cassette recorder (which, in the case of a HiFi
deck could allow 9.6Kbd with total reliability), I was limited to the
equivilent of 2.4Kbd at the standard 4.76cm/s audio cassette speed. To
mitigate this, I bumped the read write speed up to 38cm/s (15 ips!)
which gave me a read/write speed of 19.2Kbd which meant I could load up
my 8K TCL Basic from tape in a mere 5 seconds.
The tapes were formatted with 168 2KB data blocks per side with the
whole directory and FATs[1] duplicated in two of those data blocks in
the middle of the tape (or as close to the middle if the format rejected
this prime choice). This provided a total of 332KB formatted capacity
each side of a C60 cassette, a total of 664KB per tape. At the time,
this compared very favourably to IBM's fledgling 40 track double sided
floppy disk formats of 340 and 360KB capacities.
The thing to keep in mind was that it would have cost me some 300 quid
simply to buy one floppy drive and the add in controller card just to
give my homebuilt computer a slightly better data storage mechanism. In
1983, 300 quid was serious money.
The main benefit to this was that I got an awful lot of Z80 assembler
coding experience and fixed a few serious hardware bugs in that Transam
Tuscan S100 Bus computer that, rather curiously, weren't quite the
showstoppers they aught to have been. In theory, the damn thing
shouldn't have worked at all! ;-)
[1] At the time, I didn't realise I was re-inventing Microsoft's FAT
based file storage disk format and actually referred to what we now
recognise as a File Allocation Table as a "Link Table" (or in my
assembly listing "Linktbl" ;-)
--
Regards, John.
Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.
Johnny B Good
from Christian Brandt <bra...@psi5.com> contains these words:
> Tim Fardell schrieb:
You think speccy users had a high pain threshold, what about us Transam
Tuscan S100 Bus computer enthusiasts? ;-)
Johnny B Good
from Andrew Halliwell <spi...@ponder.sky.com> contains these words:
> Joe Forster/STA <s...@c64.org> wrote:
> >> They were slow, seek-times were around 40-60
> >> seconds, had little space and were sold pretty expensive.
> >
> > The info page, quoted in a previous page, says the tapes had sizes
> > between 16 and 128 kbytes and had a transfer speed of 2 kbytes/sec so
> > the largest tape should be read through in 64 seconds. Does this mean
> > that seeking was actually not faster than reading/writing? Weird.
> Thing you've got to remember about seeking is, if you're even one BYTE into
> the file you want, the entire loop of tape has to go through the machine
> before you can start to read it. Seek time on sinclair microdrives had a
> similar problem, tough usually it was a lot less... 20 seconds tops unless
> there were bad sectors and re-read attempts (which could take ages).
That was the main reason why I chose to use those data cassette drives
as an alternative to the horribly expensive floppy disk option for my
Transam Tuscan S100 Bus computer over the 600Baud tape option it came
with (if you used a HiFi deck or retuned the carrier filter to the
actual carrier frequencies, rather than the 300 bd data rate that the
designers had mistakenly designed for - thus amplifying the rumble noise
present in a cheap cassette portable recorder which rendered the higher
600 bd option useless).
Merman
wrote:
Well, that is definitely not a C64 wafa then - only one of the three
games made it to the C64 (3D Lunattack). I have my doubts on the other
three games too.
Webster
Did I mis the Quick Data Drive?
Tim Fardell
> Tim Fardell wrote:
> >
> > I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> > branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
>
> Did I mis the Quick Data Drive?
No - I haven't managed to get shipping prices yet.
I will be in touch with everyone this week with shipping quotes.
Apologies for the delay.
Steven Hirsch
> On Mon, 16 Mar 2009, Webster wrote:
>
>> Tim Fardell wrote:
>>> I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
>>> branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
>> Did I mis the Quick Data Drive?
>
> No - I haven't managed to get shipping prices yet.
>
> I will be in touch with everyone this week with shipping quotes.
>
> Apologies for the delay.
And I'd guess you never received any of the private e-mail I sent. Bummer. I
really wanted one!
Tim Fardell
Sorry Steven, no I didn't get your e-mails. I guess they must have been
filtered out as spam - sorry about that.
I will add you to the waiting list in case others drop out.
I am currently awaiting delivery of some boxes to package them up in - I
will then weigh the full package and find out the shipping cost.
Tim.
Webster
> I am currently awaiting delivery of some boxes to package them up in - I
> will then weigh the full package and find out the shipping cost.
>
> Tim.
>
I have had reports from some that this email address is blocked.
If you try to send me a private email and it is blocked I will give you
my Gmail address.
SbM
> On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Tim Fardell wrote:
>
> > I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> > branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
>
> All provisionally gone, for now.
>
> Some may become available again when people discover how much the shipping
> cost is going to be :-)
Save one for me then, if you got one left. I'm in France, so shipping
shouldn't be too expensive. Thx!
--
[SbM]
<http://sebastienmarty.free.fr> - <http://tradintosh.free.fr>
<http://sbm.ordinotheque.free.fr> - <http://palmiciel.free.fr>
"If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English" (W. Sheed)
Tim Fardell
> I have had reports from some that this email address is blocked.
> If you try to send me a private email and it is blocked I will give you
> my Gmail address.
I tried to mail you a shipping quote, but the mail was bounced back as
"Blocked".
Can you send me a mail with your alternative e-mail address, to
tim.fardell[at]virgin.net and I will re-send.
Thanks.
Tim Fardell
> Tim Fardell <tim.fardell.al...@virgin.net> wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Tim Fardell wrote:
> >
> > > I have four brand new, unopened, never used "Quick Data Drive" units,
> > > branded "Phonemark" available to anyone who wants them.
> >
> > All provisionally gone, for now.
> >
> > Some may become available again when people discover how much the shipping
> > cost is going to be :-)
>
> Save one for me then, if you got one left. I'm in France, so shipping
> shouldn't be too expensive. Thx!
Everyone has now paid for their drives, so no more will be available.
Sorry to those who missed out.
Tim.
SbM
> Everyone has now paid for their drives, so no more will be available.
> Sorry to those who missed out.
No problem.