* Ajax ( floppy disk controller ), a floppy disk controller fitted to the Atari STE

But these needed the infamous TRS-80 expansion interface, which was very expensive, and had a very unreliable floppy disk controller because it used the WD1771 floppy disc controller chip without an external " data separator ".

So they decided to also develop their own alternative in the form of an improved floppy disk controller and printer interface that could be built right into a floppy disk enclosure.

The first version of the Aster consisted of four " Eurocard's ", one Z80 CPU card with 64KB memory, one Motorola MC6845 based video card, one double density floppy disk controller card and one " keyboard / RS232 / cassette interface " card.

Because the original designer had left the company another employee completely redesigned most of the system, ( adding a display snow remover circuit, true 80 / 64 column text mode support, ( with different size letters for TRS-80 and CP / M mode, so that in TRS-80 mode the full screen was also used, not just a 64x16 portion of the 80x25 screen ) with an improved font set ( adding " gray scale " version of the TRS-80 mozaik graphics and many special PETSCII like characters ), and a more flexible and reliable floppy disk controller and keyboard interface plus many other small improvements ), also an enclosure was developed for the main computer system, ( in the form of a 19-inch rack for the Eurocards ) and for two floppy disk drives and the power supply.

Unlike the case of the 1541 and 1571, the low-level disk format used by the 1581 is similar enough to the MS-DOS format as the 1581 is built around a WD1770 FM / MFM floppy controller chip.

Only a very few comparable DOSes were stored elsewhere than floppy disks ; among these exceptions were the British BBC Micro's optional Disc Filing System, DFS, offered as a kit with a disk controller chip, a ROM chip, and a handful of logic chips, to be installed inside the computer ; and Commodore's CBM DOS, located in a ROM chip in each disk drive.

The sound and floppy controller chip, Paula, remained unchanged from the OCS design.

IBM's original floppy disk controller card also included an external 37-pin D-shell connector.

The floppy controller is unusually flexible.

The Spectrum + 2A /+ 3 motherboard ( AMSTRAD part number Z70830 ) was designed such that it could be assembled without the floppy disk controller or associated logic and a + 2 style " datacorder " connected.

The Spectrum + 2B motherboard ( AMSTRAD part number Z70833 ) does not have provision for floppy disk controller circuitry so cannot be assembled as a + 3B.

All Tandy 1000 computers featured built-in Tandy video hardware with color graphics ( CGA compatible with enhancements ), enhanced sound ( based on one of several variants of the Texas Instruments SN76496 sound generator ), game ports compatible with those on the TRS-80 Color Computer, an IBM-standard floppy disk controller supporting two drives, and a parallel printer port, all integrated into the motherboard.

) An IBM PC, XT or AT would require at least 4 expansion cards for similar hardware: one video graphics adapter card, one floppy disk controller ( FDC ) card, one serial and parallel port card, and one sound card with a joystick port.

The TL line also allowed the onboard floppy controller, parallel port, and joystick ports to be disabled, which the earlier models did not.

Notably, the TL / 3 had a high-density floppy controller for the first time, although it only shipped with a double-density 3. 5 " drive.

The ST-506 interface between the controller and drive was derived from the Shugart Associates SA1000 interface, which was in turn based upon the floppy disk drive interface, thereby making disk controller design relatively easy.

Many of the built-in Macintosh peripherals can be " borrowed " by the card when in Apple II mode ( i. e. extra RAM, 3 floppy, AppleTalk networking, clock, hard disk ).

* A strong device independent input / output model that allows the same commands and programs to access terminals, disk files, printers, magnetic and paper tapes, card readers and punches, floppy disks, network hosts, and an audio response unit ( ARU ).

These included: an Extended 80 Column Card, two Apple Super Serial Cards, a Mouse Card, and a floppy drive controller card.

The standard configuration included a floppy drive and a 40 MB or 80 MB hard drive, but a version was available for the education market which had an Apple II card in the PDS slot, two floppy drives, and no hard drive.

The system featured 256 kibibytes of memory ( expandable to 512 KiB ), an added CGA card connected to an internal monochrome ( amber ) composite monitor, and one or two half-height 5. 25 " 360K floppy disk drives.

Integer BASIC was relegated to a file on the system floppy disk that Apple II Plus users could load into a RAM card for backward compatibility, if needed.

A minimal system was delivered in a single 19 " rack about 60 " high with the card cage in the bottom, the disk drive in the middle, the tape drive above it, then the 2 inch high control panel with a floppy disk drive and ignition key on the top.

The IBM PC, in contrast, had only five expansion slots, with the video card and floppy disk controller taking two of them.

The fifteen minutes taken to read a nearly-full 16MB card-directly to hard disk-via Flashpath using the slowest ( 128kbit / s ) PC floppy controller was still simpler and slightly faster than the quickest reliable ( 115. 2kbit / s ) serial link, without the need for connection, synching and thumbnail previewing, and only beaten by expensive parallel-port based external card readers that could do the same job in two minutes or less ( 1000kbit / s-plus, comparable to USB 1. 0 ) when connected to a compatible high-speed ECP or EPP port ( and ~ 5 minutes using a basic PPT in failsafe mode ).

A fully configured 6085 came with an 80MB hard disk, 3. 7MB of RAM, a 5¼-inch floppy disk drive, an Ethernet controller, and a PC emulator card containing an 80186 CPU.

The Macintosh XL had a 400K 3. 5 " floppy drive and an internal 10 MB proprietary Widget hard drive with provision for an optional 5 or 10 MB external ProFile hard drive with the addition of a Parallel interface card.

Most manufacturers which required hot-plugging instead did not use Autoconfig for whatever was being added and removed ( e. g. a PCMCIA card ) but instead assigned whatever resource was necessary permanently to the port or controller and handled the addition or removal much like inserting a floppy disk.

The PC version can be run with just a Live CD and a floppy disk to store configuration data, or on a single Compact Flash card ( with an IDE adapter ).

One could attach a dual floppy disk controller ( 5. 25 ") and a memory expansion card ( 40K max ) to allow faster and reliable save / load of programs / data.

Because the WD1770 is capable of single density mode and uses the same IBM360 derived floppy disc format as the Intel 8271 found in the BBC Micro, it was also possible to run a DFS filing system with an alternate ROM, such as the P. R. E. S AP4 interface.

The second incarnation was a much smaller unit the width of two 5¼ " floppy drives stacked on top of each other, and the third incarnation looked like a flattened Apple with a built-in keyboard.

A third mode was entered with a special boot floppy which turned the Aster into a Videotex terminal with a 40x25 display and a Videotex character set, The software used the built in RS232 interface of the Aster to control a modem through which it could contact a Prestel service provider.

The display logic and resulting display ' snow ' was irritating, as was the missing lower case support, the CPU speed could be improved, the quality and layout of the keyboard was bothersome, and the floppy disk capacity and reliability was low.

The aster was chosen for Dutch schools by the Dutch ministry of education, in a set-up with eight disk-less Asters, and one Aster with high capacity floppy drives all connected by a LAN based on the Asters high-speed serial port hardware, and special cables that permitted that any single computer on the LAN could broadcast to all other computers.

The floppy based system was operated by the teacher who could send programs from his floppy disk, and data, to the student's disk-less systems thanks to the special BIOS in those systems.

In past years, the Factbook was available on CD-ROM, microfiche, magnetic tape, and floppy disk.

The Commodore 1541 ( also known as the CBM 1541 and VIC-1541 ) is a floppy disk drive ( FDD ) which was made by Commodore International for the Commodore 64 ( C64 ), Commodore's home computer.

The Commodore 1570 was a 5¼ " floppy disk drive for the Commodore 128 home / personal computer.

The Commodore 1571 was Commodore's high-end 5¼ " floppy disk drive.

A C128 in CP / M mode equipped with a 1571 was capable of reading and writing floppy disks formatted for many CP / M computers ; specifically, the following formats:

* The DOS operating system was the primary operating system for the Apple Computer's Apple II family of computers, from 1979 with the introduction of the floppy disk drive, until 1983 with the introduction of ProDOS ; many people continued using it long after that date.

The Atari OS only offered low-level disk-access, so an extra layer called DOS was booted off a floppy that offered higher level functions such as filesystems.

The microNOVA was later re-packaged in a PC-style case with two floppy disks as the Enterprise.

CP / M's quick success took Kildall by surprise, and he was slow to update it for high density floppy disks and hard disks.