Some Observations about the New 1581 Disk Drive

     To put these comments in perspective, the following two points should
be made:

     (1) I am doing this at the request of Ed Parry of EBBS fame (a great
BBS, I should add), and
     (2) This review of the 1581 is from the standpoint of an appliance
computerist. I plug in and use (or try to use -- depending on circumstances).

     I am familiar with the 3 1/2-inch disks; I have used them for several
years at work with my Fat Mac. I am also familiar with the 800k double-sided
disk drive. I have one with the Fat Mac at work. My experience has been
that the 3 1/2-inch disk is vulnerable to a variety of misuses. I teach
a newswriting class in which 15 students use these small disks
with their Macintoshes. I have had to replace many of the
 3-1/2-inch disks.  I do not know why. It is likely that my experience
with the "more durable" disks is unusual.
My personal experience with them has been excellent. I don't believe I have
ever had one go bad. I cannot say the same for the larger floppies.
 
     My  principal reason for getting the 1581 was its capacity: 800K. And
this is after formatting. This means that the 1581, when coupled with a
1571 provides more than 1 megabyte of disk capacity.

     One of the major disadvantages of the 1581 is that there are no programs
for it -- at least none that I could find. However, the disk utility program
packaged with the disk drive does provide some programs for the beginner and
advanced user. These programs range from backup programs for the 128 and 64
to Filecopy to Compress-128 and Zapload-64.

     I, of course, wanted to see how my most-often-used programs would
work with the 1581. Using the file-transfer program, Uni-Copy, I have
tried a wide range of public domain programs and some well-respected
commercial programs, including Bobsterm Pro128 and Paperclip II. Fewer
than half of the programs would run after transferring to the 800K
disk. I am not sure that copy protection is the reason.

     First, all of the programs transferred. No problem. However,
most of them won't load. Exceptions are Paperclip II (works great!)
and Ed Parry's EBBS V3.1 (Ed's single-drive and double-drive copy
programs, Nerdcopy and Nosecopy work very well, too). Record Master
also transferred nicely. However, only a couple of the public
domain programs will load.

     The utilities disk has a load address program on it, and this
program is supposed to allow the programmer (user?) to change the
two byte load address of any file on a diskette. The user is advised
to use 1025 "to create a program that will load on any CBM computer."
My experience has been that it WILL change the load address of
 existing programs. However, they still will not load.

     In a fairly recent issue of one of the CBM magazines I had read that
programmers had been sent 1581 disk drives. This is true in at least
one case. When I called RML Labs to see why Bobsterm-128 wouldn't load,
after being transferred to the 1581, I was told they had received their
1581 from Commodore but had not had a chance to work with it yet.
This phone call took place around June 25.

     I suspect that I am going to be happy with the 1581. It will fit
in very nicely with the BBS I use during the school year. My upload/download
section will be based on the 800K, and that should be more than enough
for the amount of use the BBS receives.

     The larger disk capacity also means that if you wish you can combine
program and data disks. For example, I put the Paperclip II program and
spellpack on the same disk and still have plenty of room left over to
use for data storage. On the other hand, based on my experience with
800K disks at work, the use of one strictly for data means that you will
have many, many files on one disk. It is convenient and frightening. I
do not have to search through many disks looking for lecture notes or
tests. They are all on the same disk. However, this convenience is
countered by the need to backup/update the data disk frequently.

     In summary, the 1581 is a winner. It is small, has plenty of capacity
and uses the smaller, more durable 3-1/2 disks. Its drawbacks, I hope,
are temporary. Because it is so new it doesn't have the commercial
support it needs. Also, the inability/failure of most programs to
load from it means that someone is going to have to come up with
a utility to solve that. Finally, I suspect that many buyers will already
own a 1541 or 1571. There needs to be some way to match these with
the 1581 in a more compatible way.

     I am in no way an expert, but I will be pleased to try to answer
non-programming-type questions.