The microdrive was an awesome device.
I have to say i used to love the Microdrives. It was a damn shame they never took off as i could have seen them being a really good way of storing your work and ven buying them for games on the ZX Spectrum.
Is there any way of putting the proper games onto one ?
Is there any way of putting the proper games onto one ?
Post edited by morcar on
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ftfy ;)
it's one of those things that's impossible to understand from diagrams etc
I didn't fully get it until I took one apart
Basically, you've got a single reel inside where tape is wound on to the outside of the reel and gets pulled out from the middle.
he'd load the game
hit the multiface 128 button
wait for the main block to be save
once the light went off swap it before the next block of code was saved
then he'd edit the basic loader to load the main parts off drive one then the remaining of drive 2
I had a rotronics wafadrive but only 64k tapes, never did find any 128k ones
but what about opposite direction, how does it get put back in middle?
Say what now???!!!
But, but ... it's not thick enough to get on the underside ... I mean ... WHAT?!?!?
I think I DO NEED a diagram!
Anyone have a busted one they're willing to snap a pic of and post here?
But I'm still not completely sure how they get the tape from the middle-and-then-out. I see it on the diagram above but just don't get it!
Is the pin in the middle (part of hub) two story tall? I.e. full tape 1st floor then somehow "twisted" to 2nd floor, then out?
I missed them when I moved from the Spectrum to an Electron and back to cassette.
My first disk drive was on an Amstrad CPC664 and that was seriously impressive. Once you had used a "proper" disk you realised the limitations of the Microdrive.
Paddy
(Wikipedia page, here)
Nx
Same here. Most of my Spectrum microdrive cartridges still work OK. I can't say the same for my QL ones, though: these I bought second hand, and so I have no idea how they might have been stored, plus the QL drive unit is slightly mis-aligned, so I have to hold the carts in the drive unit firmly for them to work.
[Edit] Oh and the very first episode of... MIAMI VICE!
Paddy
Not sure about Miami Vice though...
Ah whether you liked MV or not there is no doubt it broke the mould and introduced a whole new genre of TV. MTV Cops was a great idea and just so 80s. Need to take my socks off and break out my pastel coloured jackets. ;)
Paddy
Everything seemed new and possible in the 80s. There were bad things too but overall it was a time of great optimism.
Paddy
Personally I would love to have some real people like Reagan and Thatcher in charge now. I am totally fed up with these useless cookie cutter politicians we have now who are devoid of brains and balls. Plus very few of them seem to have held down a real job - how can you be a career politician!
Anyway, enough politics and back to the Spectrum. :-P
Paddy
Ah, yes ... when the Colosseum was finally ready and the Pantheon was destroyed in a fire ... and lets not forget the first steam engine, the Aeolipile by Hero of Alexandria.
*sigh* those were the days, or so you keep on telling us :razz:
I ordered one soon after buying my Spectrum in 83. I don't remember how long I had to wait for it but when it arrived I remember being totally amazed to see how fast a screen loaded. I was even more amazed a few days later when I received a second set from Sinclair. My brother said I should keep it, even new someone who would buy it from me. But since I had signed for delivery I thought it best to send it back.
I think their biggest drawback was the price of the carts at ?4.95 each they were just too expensive.
Awesome way back then but now they are just quaint little curiosities, fun to play about with but the DivIDE is a better solution for loading games.
John
Rather a lot of money in those days John. Luckily I believe they were ?1.99 when I got my MicroDrive.
Paddy
If only that were true. In the 80s we lived in a rural area, not rural enough that you'd not get hit by the blast, but rural enough that it was almost certain that you would survive the initial attack, and probably live long enough to experience dying slowly from a combination of fall-out, injuries sustained in the blast and the nuclear winter [0]. The trouble is basically nuclear weapon systems are fail dangerous so all it would have taken would have been a mistake during a period of percieved or real tension. It didn't help in the early 80s that I had just watched "Threads", probably the most thorougly depressing movie made. Reading some information in back issues of "The Journal of Atomic Scientists" suggests strongly that "Threads" was extremely optimistic in terms of the nuclear winter.
[0] Nuclear winter is a bit of a misnomer, it is almost entirely unlike "winter"; after a global exchange of 5000 megatons, in the following month or two light levels at mid-day in the northern hemisphere would only reach that of a moonlit night. Even a regional conflict, say between India and Pakistan could cause a "nuclear autumn" that would shorten the growing season in the breadbaskets of Europe and the United States significantly enough to cause severe food shortages. Simply put, nuclear weapons are insanity. Putting them on ICBMs that cannot be destroyed or recalled if accidentally launched is double insanity.
I promise myself starting reading threads in the usual way.:p
"Let's play global thermo-nuclear war"...
Personally I would prefer a nice game of chess. ;)
Seriously though, nuclear weapons are insane but atleast the two super-powers in USSR and USA had a reasonable level of control. What is scary these days is the idea of rogue states being able to develop and deploy low-cost dirty nuclear devices.
Blimey - have I just invented a new market for Uncle Clive?
The Sinclair ZX Bomb! :razz:
Paddy
so do I, but I live in Lincolnshire :) There'd have been no shortage of bombs going off around here I wouldn't think