Floppy disc interface for the Junior - and other 6502 computers

11-42 — elektor november 1982 floppy-disk interface for the Junior G. de Cuyper Computer fever broke out here in Europe about eight years ago. The first 8-bit processors were even available at a hobbyist"s budget. The great change, however, came in 1976 when Shugart brought the first 8-inch drive onto the market. Until then computer data had to be stored on punched paper tape or inconveniently on magnetic tape at speeds that are considered extremely slow today. The floppy disk revolu- tionized rapid data interchange be- tween the computer and an external mass storage device. Rapid paper tape readers only achieved rates of up to 15 kilobaud (baud = bit/second) at best. Paper tape punches were barely able to exceed 700 baud. Unless the user is to go to great expense with magnetic tape recording using a cassette recorder, the upper limit is 1200 baud at a tape speed of 4.75 cm/s. was decided to save costs in another area when implementing a DOS (DOS = disk operating system) for the...