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Wafa Drive VS Microdrive,

Scottie_ukScottie_uk
edited February 2008 in Sinclair Miscellaneous
From my limited knowlege, it looks like the Wafa Drive and the Microdrive were mechanically similar in operation (relitively speaking).

Which format then was better, what are the pros and cons of each format??
Post edited by Scottie_uk on
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Comments

  • jpjp
    edited February 2008
    Here's a comparative review of the then available technologies
    jp nz | TZXs updated with new loading screens | youtube bits and bobs
  • GrazGraz
    edited February 2008
    I shredded loads of wafers recently. Just broke one after the other. Turned out to be a dodgy drive. :( Never lost a single Microdrive like that before, so I'd say MD was betterer. Shame, cuz I was looking forward to using the Wafers for pet projects.
  • WinstonWinston
    edited February 2008
    I bought a wafadrive second hand in the late 80s. It wasn't very reliable... I was soon back to using cassettes.
  • Matt_BMatt_B
    edited February 2008
    The Microdrive wins hands down. It's much faster, more compact, more reliable and companies occasionally supported them.

    They're both crap compared to even the most basic disk drives though.
  • jpjp
    edited February 2008
    Matt_B wrote: »
    The Microdrive wins hands down. It's much faster, more compact, more reliable and companies occasionally supported them.

    They're both crap compared to even the most basic disk drives though.

    Yeah, sort of agreed. I did eventually upgrade from a Microdrive to a +D and it was (is) the shizzle...
    jp nz | TZXs updated with new loading screens | youtube bits and bobs
  • dekhdekh
    edited February 2008
    +D is our hero.

    Better than my old Opus but I still miss the big black beast.
  • glancasterglancaster
    edited February 2008
    I had a Wafadrive back in the day. It was rock-solid reliable; never a single problem.

    I think the main advantages it had over Microdrives were the reliability, the additional capacity ("128K" wafers typically formatted at over 140K), the availability of two drives for copying (admittedly you could do this with microdrives, but most folks just bought one), and the parallel printer interface.

    It was relatively slow compared to Microdrives (unless you used the lower capacity wafers: 16K/32K rather than 64K/128K). Also ate up 2K of your memory, which made converting games to wafer quite tricky. Oh, and the wafers were expensive and hard to find...
  • Scottie_ukScottie_uk
    edited February 2008
    It would seem then that the Wafa Drive was a redundant system from the get go then??

    Right?? or Wrong??
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
  • glancasterglancaster
    edited February 2008
    Scottie_uk wrote: »
    It would seem then that the Wafa Drive was a redundant system from the get go then??

    Right?? or Wrong??

    Wrong! As far as I was concerned, anyway.

    I got mine in the YS "special offer" when they were reduced to ?50, which was pretty good for a reliable dual-drive system complete with printer interface and a good word processor program.

    IIRC, all the other drive systems tended to have only an RS232 printer interface (or none). Most printers were parallel in those days, and RS232 was usually a costly option.
  • Matt_BMatt_B
    edited February 2008
    The Wafadrive was certainly a bargain when it started being flogged off on the cheap. However, by that stage it should have been pretty clear that they weren't ever going to receive much in the way of commercial support.

    I'd still stick with my assessment that both it and the Micro Drive were poor man's alternatives to, admittedly rather expensive at the time, disk drives.
  • glancasterglancaster
    edited February 2008
    True. But none of the disk drive systems had much in the way of commercial support either (except the +3).
  • Scottie_ukScottie_uk
    edited February 2008
    glancaster wrote: »
    True. But none of the disk drive systems had much in the way of commercial support either (except the +3).

    But, in his defence it was not hard to get hold of floppy disks, you could pick them up in the high street. Even Argos sold them.
    Calling all ASCII Art Architects Visit the WOS Wall of Text and contribute: https://www.yourworldoftext.com/wos
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