Poland is about to see Percom and the SWP ATR8000 disk controllers soon.
As compared to Toms or Atari XF551 or just about any other controller, Percom and some other early controllers differ in that they accept modification of ALL Percom control block variables. Step rate, number of sectors, you name it. It is possible to configure a percom or ATR 8000 drive to format in single-density, 80-tracks, double-sided.
Almost no other controller has such flexibility and that is a darned shame as there are a ton to chose from.
No Atari drive will allow modification of the Block and will revert almost any change to default.
Both Percom and ATR8000 - controllers are not protected against spurious writes when powered off or on, thus it is vital to remove any floppy media from the drives before cycling power on the ATR8000 or Percom controllers.
Neither of these controllers will format,read, or write to Atari Enhanced-density-formatted disks. Both controllers predate Atari's introduction of this format.
Percom and ATR8000 will control 8" drives, or more importantly 3.5" drives which have the 3-mode jumper setting. This sets the 3.5" mechanism to emulating an 8" 77-track DS HD drive. In Atari mode you can have 1 meg per disk. On ATR8000 in CP/M mode, you get 1.35 meg per disk.
Both controllers will accept as many as four standard mechanisms of any type in mixture and in no particular order. Termination and drive numbering need be done properly. IBM-style twisted cables will not work on these controllers.
I'm really interested in what Poland has to say about ATR8000 and Percom Ultraspeed, is it possible?
