The late seventies/early eighties saw some of the most interesting disk
drives ever to come out of those Canadian factories. They somehow managed
to cram as much data on Double Density disks as we cram on High Density
disks of the same size today. Simply amazing. Well, many of these drives
were marketed with the 'B' line machines, as well is the PET 80XX high
end computer line.
Like all Commodore disk drives, these drives were "smart" devices. They included their own processor, their own memory, and their own disk operating system. In fact, the relationship between a Commodore computer and it's disk drive resembles more closely two computers on a network than a typical Computer->peripheral relationship. The peripherals on the IEEE-488 "network" each had a unique identifying "Unit" number, typically ranging from 8-30. This number identified which physical device was being accessed. When a disk drive contained more than one floppy drive (like the dual drives on this page), you also had to refer to the particular "drive" number you wanted (typically 0 or 1).
Model : 8050 Type : Dual 5.25" Floppy Disk Media : Single Sided, Double Density Capacity : 512K per disk, or 1024K total Interface: IEEE-488 Dos : CBM DOS 2.7 Notes :
Model : 8250 Type : Dual 5.25" Floppy Disk Media : Double Sided, Double Density Capacity : 1024K per disk, or 2048K total Interface: IEEE-488 Dos : CBM DOS 2,7 Notes : Demo disk
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