Talk:North Star Computers

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[edit] Hard Sector Disks

Can someone explain why using hard-sectored disks would make it difficult to port software to the Horizon? Wouldn't the difference in OS be a more critical issue? Maury 23:45, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

The North Star disk controller did not use an expensive LSI floppy disk controller like the Western Digital 1771. Their board was cheaper to produce but depended on the sector pulses being generated by the disk drive' hard sectors. Most of the other systems used the LSI floppy disk controller solution and could use soft sector diskettes. You could not easily interchange diskettes between systems.

Here is a link to an early advertisement. [1]

-- SWTPC6800 19:17, 21 July 2007 (UTC)