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Commodore 8050

 

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Commodore 8050



 
 
The Commodore 8050 and Commodore 8250 were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 drives for Commodore International
Commodore International

Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a United States electronics company based in West Chester, Pennsylvania which was a vital player in the home computer/personal computer field in the 1980s....
 computers. They used a wide rectangular steel case form similar to that of the Commodore 4040
Commodore 4040

The Commodore 4040 and its sibling, the 2040 and the European marketed 3040, were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk drives for Commodore International computers....
, and used the IEEE-488
IEEE-488

IEEE-488 is a short-range, digital communications computer bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years. Originally created for use with automated test equipment, the standard is still in wide use for that purpose....
 interface common to Commodore PET/CBM
Commodore PET

The PET was a home computer-/personal computer produced by Commodore International starting in 1977. Although it was not a top seller outside the Canadian, US, and UK educational markets, it was Commodore's first full-featured computer and would form the basis for their future success....
 computers.

The 8050 was a single sided drive, whereas the 8250 could use both sides of a disk simultaneously. Both used a "quad" density format storing approximately 0.5 megabyte per side.






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Encyclopedia


The Commodore 8050 and Commodore 8250 were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk
Floppy disk

A floppy disk is a data storage medium that is composed of a disk of thin, flexible magnetic storage medium encased in a square or rectangle plastic shell....
 drives for Commodore International
Commodore International

Commodore, the commonly used name for Commodore International, was a United States electronics company based in West Chester, Pennsylvania which was a vital player in the home computer/personal computer field in the 1980s....
 computers. They used a wide rectangular steel case form similar to that of the Commodore 4040
Commodore 4040

The Commodore 4040 and its sibling, the 2040 and the European marketed 3040, were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk drives for Commodore International computers....
, and used the IEEE-488
IEEE-488

IEEE-488 is a short-range, digital communications computer bus specification that has been in use for over 30 years. Originally created for use with automated test equipment, the standard is still in wide use for that purpose....
 interface common to Commodore PET/CBM
Commodore PET

The PET was a home computer-/personal computer produced by Commodore International starting in 1977. Although it was not a top seller outside the Canadian, US, and UK educational markets, it was Commodore's first full-featured computer and would form the basis for their future success....
 computers.

The 8050 was a single sided drive, whereas the 8250 could use both sides of a disk simultaneously. Both used a "quad" density format storing approximately 0.5 megabyte per side. The density of media was similar to later PC high density floppy disks, but the 8050 and 8250 could not use PC high density disks reliably. Since "quad" density disks were rare even at the time, users quickly found that typical double density
Double density

Double density, often shortened DD, is a capacity designation on magnetic storage, usually floppy disks. It describes the use of an encoding of information, which can encode on average twice as many bits per time unit compared to single density....
 floppy disks had enough magnetic media density to work in these drives.

These drives were not dual mode, so they could not read or write disks formatted by the more common lower capacity Commodore 1541
Commodore 1541

The Commodore 1541 , made by Commodore International, was the best-known floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64 home computer. The 1541 was a single-sided 170 kilobyte drive for 5?" disks....
 or Commodore 4040
Commodore 4040

The Commodore 4040 and its sibling, the 2040 and the European marketed 3040, were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk drives for Commodore International computers....
 models.

Some variants of these drives existed. The Commodore 8250LP was the 8250 in a lower profile, tan-colored case. The Commodore SFD-1001 was a single drive version of the 8250 in a Commodore 1541
Commodore 1541

The Commodore 1541 , made by Commodore International, was the best-known floppy disk drive for the Commodore 64 home computer. The 1541 was a single-sided 170 kilobyte drive for 5?" disks....
 style case (similarly to the Commodore 2031LP
Commodore 2031

The Commodore 2031 and Commodore 4031 were single unit 5¼" floppy disk drives for Commodore International computers. They used a similar steel case form to the Commodore 9060 hard disk drives, and used the IEEE-488 interface common to Commodore PET computers....
), often used by bulletin board system
Bulletin board system

File:Monochrome-bbs.pngA Bulletin Board System, or BBS, is a computer system running list of BBS software that allows User to Telecommunication circuit and Logging to the system using a terminal program....
s for their physical similarity to 1541s and high capacity and speed.