Recently I bought a CBM 8050 dual floppy drive from eBay. It came at a good price, but it was listed as “untested. for spares or repair”. So in this video we’re going to inspect it, give it a good clean, and see if we can make it work.
The 8050 is an example of “intelligent” disk drives from the Commodore era. Instead of being controlled from the computer through a drive controller card, this drive has its own complete internal computer. In fact it has more computing power than the PET it connects to – there are two MOS 6502 CPUs inside it!
It’s also made from 18 gauge steel, and is very heavy.
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