A&J MicroDrive System-100
The A&J MicroDrive System-100 is a tape drive almost identical to the Exatron Stringy Floppy.
Entrepo / A&J MicroDrive was a company that spun off from Exatron. Initially they sold tape drives with the same drive mechanisms and cassettes (called "wafers") as the Exatron Stringy Floppy, then switched to a different drive mechanism from BSR and "microwafer" cassette that is conceptually the same as the Exatron Stringy Floppy, but with different dimensions. The BSR & Exatron drives & wafers are not compatible with each other, even though at least one example BSR-drive system also called their tapes "Stringy Floppy".
The same drive was sold in at least a few other products for other platforms. Some examples:
- Rotronics WafaDrive for the ZX Spectrum
- Entrepo Quick Data Drive Model 8500 for Commodor 64 & VIC-20 (also rebadged by at least Phonemark and NCS)
- Spectravideo SVI-777 Stringy Floppy Drive for MSX systems
The wafers were made & sold by Entrepo, and also rebadged by at least Phonemark and Smith Corona.
Manual
Manual for the Commodore64 version, only useful for the hardware aspects:
Entrepo Quick Data Drive Model 8500 (for quality, ignore the .pdf, the original is the .cbz)
There is no software manual for the Model 100 version of this drive.
Scanning the M100SIG yields a few bits of instruction.
This review gives a few commands and procedures in passing.
Review of A&J System 100
Software
The "tape operating system" software was distributed from their BBS. Customers were instructed to dial the BBS and download the software and create their own tape backups.
TRS-80 Model 100
http://www.club100.org/library/ups/tosa.100 A&J System 100 TOS for TRS-80 Model 100, version A
http://www.club100.org/library/ups/tosb.100 A&J System 100 TOS for TRS-80 Model 100, version B
http://www.club100.org/library/ups/tosc.100 A&J System 100 TOS for TRS-80 Model 100, version C
http://www.club100.org/library/ups/tosd.100 A&J System 100 TOS for TRS-80 Model 100, version D
Originally found at http://www.club100.org/library/libups.html in the Robert Benson section.
You can bootstrap these onto the 100 over the serial port a few different ways
- Mac/Linux/BSD: https://github.com/bkw777/dlplus : (dl -b tosd.100)
- Mac/Linux/BSD: https://github.com/bkw777/pdd.sh : (pdd bootstrap tosd.100)
- Windows: https://github.com/bkw777/tsend : (.\tsend.ps1 -file tosd.100)
- Generic comm program & TELCOM: http://bitchin100.com/wiki/index.php?title=Text_File_Transfer_using_Hyperterminal
Other software besides the OS:
https://github.com/LivingM100SIG/Living_M100SIG/blob/main/M100SIG/Lib-09-PERIFERALS/DYSAVE.DOC
https://github.com/LivingM100SIG/Living_M100SIG/blob/main/M100SIG/Lib-09-PERIFERALS/DYSAVE.AJ
https://github.com/LivingM100SIG/Living_M100SIG/blob/main/M100SIG/Lib-07-UTILITIES/FIXKEY.100
Olivetti M10
Misc References
http://www.trs-80.org/exatron-stringy-floppy/
There is some info in the M100SIG archive, particularly the "reviews" dir.
Manual for A&J MicroDrive for Timex Sinclair
See pg 33: Portable-100 Magazine, 1986 April pg. 33
Related / Other Platform Versions:
