Altair Minidisk 88-MDS

General discussions related to the Altair 8800 Clone

Altair Minidisk 88-MDS

Postby AltairClone » June 28th, 2014, 10:40 am

The Altair Minidisk (88-MDS) was a 5.25" floppy drive system offered by MITS for the Altair. It was slower and had much less capacity than the 8" drive (70K vs 308K)., however, it was also physically smaller, fitting in the Altair 680 sized cabinet instead of an 8800 sized cabinet. Both BASIC and Altair DOS were available for the Minidisk.

Modern support for this drive (emulation, disk drive images, etc.) was non-existent until some very recent work by a few Altair hobbyists. I am now in the process of adding Minidisk support to the Altair Clone so that Minidisk images can be loaded and executed on the Altair Clone.

So now I'd like some input. In a real Altair running standard Altair software, you could not mix 8" and 5.25" drives. Should I stick with this restriction in the Altair Clone for accuracy's sake, or should I allow both types of drives to be present at the same time?

Mike
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Re: Altair Minidisk 88-MDS

Postby toml_12953 » June 29th, 2014, 1:49 pm

I'd go for accuracy, although if I could have my way, I'd have a real floppy Interface instead so I could add physical drives! :)

Tom L
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Re: Altair Minidisk 88-MDS

Postby AltairClone » June 29th, 2014, 5:41 pm

Do you still have a real Altair as well? I am going to make myself finish the Altair floppy controller I've been working on for the original Altairs. It will allow readily available 8" Shugart drives to work identically and interchangeably with original Altair hardware, software, and media. It also has RAM and PROM on it if your system needs those

Mike
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Re: Altair Minidisk 88-MDS

Postby toml_12953 » June 29th, 2014, 8:55 pm

AltairClone wrote:Do you still have a real Altair as well? I am going to make myself finish the Altair floppy controller I've been working on for the original Altairs. It will allow readily available 8" Shugart drives to work identically and interchangeably with original Altair hardware, software, and media. It also has RAM and PROM on it if your system needs those

Mike


Sadly, no. Your Clone is my only Altair now. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope! (or something like that!)
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