 1-Dec-84 08:31:45-MST,2538;000000000000
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Date:  1 Dec 1984 10:23:25 EST (Saturday)
From: Robert Bloom AMSTE-TOI 3775 <rbloom@apg-1>
Subject: Teac FD55F and the Horizon
To: plehn@mit-mc
Cc: northstar-users@simtel20

Al Plehn:

I found your recent message in regards to the 96tpi disk drives 
for the Northstar very interesting as I am about to replace my 
old SSDD drives on my Horizon.  I do have acouple of questions:

Did I have to get another disk controller cable?  My current 
cable has just the two connectors and doesn't continue on to the 
backpanel cutout for extension.  What I'll probably do is to 
replace one of the SSDD with two FD55Fs half-heights.  If I got a 
pair of the FD55Fs do I need a edge connector for each drive - 
for a total of three?

The same thing goes for the power supply - do the drives come 
with open ended cables with the disk end plug attached?

If the answer to the above is no, do you know if the mail order 
places normally have them?  (As you probably might have surmised, 
this will be my first hack at mail ordering something, and in 
truth, it will be the first hardware modification to the Horizon 
that I'm going to attempt.  I am a bit apprehensive of mucking 
around with something that is working quite well already.  I 
bought the Horizon as used two years ago - it does have 64k, but 
by stuffing a old 32k RAM [phathomed] board and not by a HRAM64.)

Something that probably should have been asked first - do the 
Teac's just slide and plug in, or are other modifications 
neccessary?  Also, as I have primarily Verbatim DataLife disks, 
do you know if they will they format ok at 96tpi?  Or are the 
special 96tpi DSDD disks neccessary?  Of course, I assume they 
are all formated as 10 hard sectors.

Before your message I had thought that I was going to simply 
replace the drives with the standard Tandon TM100-2 'Quad' drives 
- several Byte ads had them at ~$150.  Since your message I've 
seen a California Digital ad with the Teac FD55F at $135 for two!  
It would be stupid to get lesser capacity drives for more, 
providing that they will work!

With 786k per drive vs. the current 163k per that I now have, I 
might even stop drooling over the Z-100 and keep the horizon for 
a few more years.

Thanks much! 
Bob Bloom

p.s.  My "specialities" are dBase II programming and TSS/C - if 
you have any questions in these areas I probably could answer 
them.

