mjnurney
we live as we dream. Alone.
After many years of searching i have finally managed to find an almost mint Opus Discovery disk drive for the sinclair spectrum computer.
This system was the first disk drive that i ever saw in real life and i suppose it would of been in 1985 or there abouts. A friend at school was showing off that he had a disk drive (i didn't know what one was) and he had a new sinclair printer too. (thermal and he did his lines on it at school - the teacher had not seen a printed sheet from a pupil before)
Anyway here is my pride and joy...
A 1985 Opus Discovery 3.5 inch disk system for the zx spectrum.
This disk drive can use the microdrive commands; i.e.
cat 1
load *"m";1;"filename"
format 1
save *"m";1;"filename" etc..
but the commands can also be shortened to
load *1;"filename"
The Opus Discovery provides several different expansions in a single unit, featuring a Joystick port, pass-through expansion connector, parallel printer port, a composite video/monitor output and a single 3.5in disk drive that supports disks of up to 250K in capacity (178K when formatted).
An upgraded model, the Discovery 2, was also introduced that featured 2 drives. The Discovery 1 could be upgraded to the Discovery 2 by returning the system to the manufacturer. The power supply for the Opus replaces the original Sinclair model, and is used to power both the interface and the computer.
Operationally quite similar to the Microdrive (albeit with disks), the same commands are supported by both the Discovery and ZX Interface I - this reduces the 'learning-curve' quite dramatically and allows many programs with ZX Interface I & Microdrive support to be easily adapted or use without difficulty. The ZX Microdrive is faster, however.
£199 (1985 price)
178K per disk 40 track
Ram upgrade'able to 196K per disk and a ram drive option.
Some 1985 facts
ZX spectrum 48K £119.95
ZX interface 1 £44.95
C64 with Ferguson TV £408.95
Atrai 2600 £49.99
Ford Cortina £3475
Sinclair stock sold to DIXONS for around £10 million in 1985 to fund the C5 (1986 Sinclair computers sold to Amstrad)
This system was the first disk drive that i ever saw in real life and i suppose it would of been in 1985 or there abouts. A friend at school was showing off that he had a disk drive (i didn't know what one was) and he had a new sinclair printer too. (thermal and he did his lines on it at school - the teacher had not seen a printed sheet from a pupil before)
Anyway here is my pride and joy...
A 1985 Opus Discovery 3.5 inch disk system for the zx spectrum.
This disk drive can use the microdrive commands; i.e.
cat 1
load *"m";1;"filename"
format 1
save *"m";1;"filename" etc..
but the commands can also be shortened to
load *1;"filename"
The Opus Discovery provides several different expansions in a single unit, featuring a Joystick port, pass-through expansion connector, parallel printer port, a composite video/monitor output and a single 3.5in disk drive that supports disks of up to 250K in capacity (178K when formatted).
An upgraded model, the Discovery 2, was also introduced that featured 2 drives. The Discovery 1 could be upgraded to the Discovery 2 by returning the system to the manufacturer. The power supply for the Opus replaces the original Sinclair model, and is used to power both the interface and the computer.
Operationally quite similar to the Microdrive (albeit with disks), the same commands are supported by both the Discovery and ZX Interface I - this reduces the 'learning-curve' quite dramatically and allows many programs with ZX Interface I & Microdrive support to be easily adapted or use without difficulty. The ZX Microdrive is faster, however.
£199 (1985 price)
178K per disk 40 track
Ram upgrade'able to 196K per disk and a ram drive option.
Some 1985 facts
ZX spectrum 48K £119.95
ZX interface 1 £44.95
C64 with Ferguson TV £408.95
Atrai 2600 £49.99
Ford Cortina £3475
Sinclair stock sold to DIXONS for around £10 million in 1985 to fund the C5 (1986 Sinclair computers sold to Amstrad)
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