Early 3.5" Floppy Drives

[Chuck Guzis]

On 12/13/2005 at 11:29 PM Barry Watzman wrote:

>Well, the Heathkit / Zenith Z-100 ran MS-DOS (called Z-DOS -- it was not
PC
>compatible at the hardware level) and also supported 8" floppy drives (in
>fact a very nice accessory external dual-drive 8" floppy was offered).
>Also, again not PC compatible, but the CompuPro (Godbout) systems had 8"
>drives and in some configurations ran MS-DOS.  Also, the Seattle Computer
>Products systems.  And there were 8" controllers for early PCs.

I seem to remember that the first version of DOS 1.x for the Compupro (did
it run on the 85-88 board?:) used a legit retail version of PC-DOS, with
the IBMBIO files replaced by Godbout-specific I/O drivers.  Does anyone
remember this?  I think it was because MS didn't want to talk small-volume
sales for a specific architecture.

I checked my files and the NEC PC-8801-16 used MS-DOS 1.25 in 8" media.
Packed with it is an 8" DOS copy of Wordstar/Mailmerge.  And, for whatever
reason, a 5.25" copy of DOS 1.25.  

Cheers,
Chuck