Compusense, DragonPlus and the hard disk interface ...
Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:42 am
Hi all,
I've been chatting to Ted Oprychal, former MD of Compusense. Among other things, I asked the two questions you probably all want to know -
What became of the hard disk interface you advertised in Dragon User in 1986, and demonstrated at the 6809 show?
"The hard disk drive, prototype, was a SASI controller which worked remarkably well as a SS30 card on the SWTPC or Dragon system. We owned some hard disks – 5mb and 10MB capacity – which were available for around £500.00. They were excellent for Flex and OS9 but the estimated number of sales was so low that we decided not to go ahead. I do remember some sceptical faces at the shows but these were real enough and were used in-house to eliminate old 8” floppy drives. At the time, a Winchester drive cost several thousand pounds. The interface was pretty simple, a couple of bi-directional buffers. The driver code was written for Flex – no I don’t have a copy – it was fairly straightforward."
"The Hard drive: It was one of the first to have a 5 ¼ inch drive footprint and required similar power levels. The on-board controller was integrated with the drive. All that was required was a bidirectional interface with software handling. Nothing fancy, however that was appropriate for a Dragon. The drives were extremely reliable"
Do you still have anything from that time? Software? Prototypes?
"We owned hundreds of 8” volumes. These were packed into tea chests when we moved out of our building and succumbed to water damage. I believe I said “oh dear” or something like that when I found out. It was probably all for the best. We disposed of stuff by the skip load. [...] I threw out a lot of stuff and EBay got my old 6809 system"
As for Compusense itself, after the Dragon faded away, they moved into 6809 and 68000 co-processor cards for PCs. When that market also faded away, Compusense ceased being active in retail and was a vehicle for Ted's consultancy work. I think Ted is now retired and produces designs for 3D kits for model railways. I'm hoping he'll come along to the Meetup in June!
Tony
I've been chatting to Ted Oprychal, former MD of Compusense. Among other things, I asked the two questions you probably all want to know -
What became of the hard disk interface you advertised in Dragon User in 1986, and demonstrated at the 6809 show?
"The hard disk drive, prototype, was a SASI controller which worked remarkably well as a SS30 card on the SWTPC or Dragon system. We owned some hard disks – 5mb and 10MB capacity – which were available for around £500.00. They were excellent for Flex and OS9 but the estimated number of sales was so low that we decided not to go ahead. I do remember some sceptical faces at the shows but these were real enough and were used in-house to eliminate old 8” floppy drives. At the time, a Winchester drive cost several thousand pounds. The interface was pretty simple, a couple of bi-directional buffers. The driver code was written for Flex – no I don’t have a copy – it was fairly straightforward."
"The Hard drive: It was one of the first to have a 5 ¼ inch drive footprint and required similar power levels. The on-board controller was integrated with the drive. All that was required was a bidirectional interface with software handling. Nothing fancy, however that was appropriate for a Dragon. The drives were extremely reliable"
Do you still have anything from that time? Software? Prototypes?
"We owned hundreds of 8” volumes. These were packed into tea chests when we moved out of our building and succumbed to water damage. I believe I said “oh dear” or something like that when I found out. It was probably all for the best. We disposed of stuff by the skip load. [...] I threw out a lot of stuff and EBay got my old 6809 system"
As for Compusense itself, after the Dragon faded away, they moved into 6809 and 68000 co-processor cards for PCs. When that market also faded away, Compusense ceased being active in retail and was a vehicle for Ted's consultancy work. I think Ted is now retired and produces designs for 3D kits for model railways. I'm hoping he'll come along to the Meetup in June!
Tony