Amdek 3” drive for ATARI 8?

[Doctorx]

Curious if anyone owned one - i recall an ad on the back page inside of a magazine that showed an amdek color monitor with i believe an 800xl and the dual 3” drive.. if you did own it, please speak to it.. i obtained one of these for the Trs 80 back around 1995 and pretty much turned it around immediately as i had no interest in starting a TRS collection - at the time i remember thinking that the unit felt “robust” almost percom like robust… it was a boat anchor.. 

[Doctorx]

Wow.. looks like someone just sold one they inherited in a collection from their dad.. .wow. NEVER seen the atari version for sale.

[Peri Noid]

Can you post a link? 

 

Recently (1-2 weeks ago) @zaxon made a 3" disk drive for Atari8, based on Amstrad DDI-1 (mech) and XF551 (logic). 

[+DjayBee]

18 minutes ago, Peri Noid said:

Can you post a link? 

Look in this thread:

 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/324104-my-dad-left-me-his-computer-collection-and-i-dont-know-where-to-start

[Peri Noid]

 

[Doctorx]

Here is the ad…

 

[+Larry]

@zaxon sure does come up with some interesting stuff!  I've been kicking myself in the rear for years for not buying an Amdek that was offered with about a dozen disk cartridges for about $100 or so.  It was a Buy It Now deal, probably in the late 90's, and my issue is that they are like Percoms -- slow (with no UltraSpeed), especially in DD.  The seller was a well-known Atari software author, and I want to say it was Scott Adams, but not sure.  Anyway, I've got way too many disk drives, so I  didn't need another one.

[+kheller2]

I didn't know those 3" units were flippy disks!

 

[_The Doctor__]

Yup, single sided mechs at 180k, you have to flip the disk cartridge by hand for the second side. Slow and media was hard to get then and now it's all but useless. If they had made the drives double sided at kick off, it might have actually made some headway. I suppose it's a form of security in that no one will be reading your sensitive disk data very easily on this form factor of media

[KG7PFS]

23 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

Yup, single sided mechs at 180k, you have to flip the disk cartridge by hand for the second side. Slow and media was hard to get then and now it's all but useless. If they had made the drives double sided at kick off, it might have actually made some headway. I suppose it's a form of security in that no one will be reading your sensitive disk data very easily on this form factor of media

I'm pretty sure 3" double sided drives exist. Amdek advertized them for IBM, and some Timex drives were 620k. I don't know if the Amdek Atari unit could be upgraded or not.

 

[Doctorx]

There have been several posts here and there over the years either pointing to whoever the original mfg of the diskettes was making light of the fact that they are still *readily* available.  No, i do not have any proof - but my memory is still relatively sharp. 

[+bf2k+]

I had one of the Amdek Dual drives on my BBS back around 84 or 85.  I remember even then those 3" disks were not easy to get.  You could not buy them in any computer store around here.  I only had 5 or 6 of them that came with the drive that I bought used from a local Atari geek (like me).

 

I also was able to hang a couple of Teac drives off of it... it could control 2 external drives.  I cannot remember if they were SS or DS but they worked well.  At first I had to run a "modified by Keith Ledbetter" DOS in order to write to them.  (I think I still have that DOS around here somewhere.)  I remember having to modify the VTOC on any disk being used in the two TEACs as the KeithDOS could not write to all of the sectors on the disk.  Once I started running SpartaDOS 3.2d, there were no more issues with them.  SD 3 could fully write to the disks.

[+MrFish]

I'm still interested to find out what Brand/Model the mechs were for these.

 

[joeventura]

On 4/1/2023 at 10:02 AM, Doctorx said:

Here is the ad…

 

I had this exact unit back in the day, bought it at a flea market in New Jersey

Long gone now

[+kheller2]

9 hours ago, MrFish said:

I'm still interested to find out what Brand/Model the mechs were for these.

 

I'm going to guess they were Hitachi since they were really pushing the 3" along with Matsushita.  Are these the same disks as the Maxell CF2?

[+MrFish]

11 minutes ago, kheller2 said:

Are these the same disks as the Maxell CF2?

Yes...

CPCWiki: CF2 Compact Floppy Disc 

[Note: Stupidly, they spell Amdek -> Amdeck]

 

[Fuji-Man]

I had mine out of boxes a while back. They are fairly heavy despite their looks.

Edited April 11, 2023 by Fuji-Man

[+MrFish]

18 minutes ago, Fuji-Man said:

I had mine out of boxes a while back.

Nice... two... eh, four... and three original SpartaDOS X carts teetering on top of the monitor?

  

18 minutes ago, Fuji-Man said:

They are fairly heavy despite their looks.

"Despite their looks"? They look, heavy

 

If you ever feel inclined to open them up and look at the mechs...

 

[Caterpiggle]

I has that Amdek 3 for Apple II version. Same model in 1st photo in this page. No, I do have that model for Atari version , just Apple II.

[351cougar]

what was the time delta between these and 3 1/2" disks ? did it end up like a vhs beta deal? I heard of several hard case floppy formats during that time but only the 3 1/2 really took off.  

[+kheller2]

My understanding is that there were several 3" formats all competing at the same time.  Sony's format 3.5" came out in 1981, but it wasn't until the Microfloppy Industry Committee in 82/83 came out with a standard format based on 3.5" (but slightly different from Sony) that companies started to look into the format.  https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1983-09/page/n167/mode/2up

 

Apple adopted the new format for the Macintosh, then Atari and Commodore.  Done deal by that point.

 

[351cougar]

I read thru several wiki's on this stuff, but (more and more) am reluctant to take it all at face value. Some of the formats were very niche usage. AND extremely expensive, hence the usage of tape for so long around the world. I had a tape drive , for a few weeks, until I got a ATR8000 and teac DSDD drives. 

[+slx]

My dad used an Amstrad PCW with 3“ floppies in his office and they felt much sturdier than 3,5“ floppies. Never split at the seams. I‘d assume they are a bit more common in the UK as there were several models of computer using them.

 

I considered buying the Amdek unit offered recently but then decided that without any practical use (and at least half a dozen 5¼“ floppy drives around) it just wasn‘t worth the transatlantic shipping plus duties. Cool device nonetheless.