Morex Floppy Disk System

Personal Computer News

John Lettice

SPECTRUM SPIN John Lettice is impressed by a prototype Spectrum disk system. PRODUCT: Morex Disk Drive Interface MANUFACTURER: Morex Peripherals, [redacted] SYSTEM 1: One 200K drive, £286 SYSTEM 2: One 400K drive, £366 SYSTEM 3: One 800K drive, £539 (Additional drives 200K £228, 400K £309, 800K £458). Disk systems for the Spectrum are finally taking off, though the most interesting, from ITL and Morex, are still only at prototype stage - both these are due to arrive in the shops at the end of April. PCN inspected a Morex drive and very interesting it looks too. The system we looked at was, as far as styling is concerned, decidedly provisional. The interface itself was uncased, but the works seemed to be sufficiently firmed up to make them worth looking at. It consists of interface, cable, PSU, system disk and a single 200K, 400K or 800K drive. It supports up to four drives altogether, so you could spend from £286 for a single drive with 200K to £1,913 fora total of 3.2Mb. This makes it pricey, but the system itself is much classier, and much better value, than the Viscount disk drive at £245. Disk versions of Tasword 2, Masterfile and Onmicalc also come bundled with the system, so it'll now be possible to get a credible business system working on the Spectrum. The disk interface works with most drives. Those used by the test system were twin 5.25in 800K Mitsubishis, but which drives will be sold with the setup hasn't been decided yet. Hitachis or Sonys are unlikely as, according to Morex's Dimitri Koveos, the company doesn't have the capital to deal with large numbers of these. However, Morex is currently negotiating a form of financing/manufacturing deal, and the outcome of these negotiations could well considerably influence the final product IN USE Power up the Spectrum and drives, put a system disk in drive 1, press the reset button and the system is up and running. This is so quick that if you're lazy you will often find yourself hitting reset rather than tidying up after some operations. During testing the maximum access time was around four seconds. For the user, the nicest thing about the Morex interface is it's use of existing Spectrum syntax, prefaced by PRINT#4. This acts as a software switch, and means there's little extra to learn. The interface also supports Microdrive commands such as CAT and FORMAT;MOVE will have been implemented by the time it is in the shops. MOVE provides a rename and copy facility, for example, MOVE "f1","f2": PRINT 1 alters the name f1 to f2. MOVE can also be used to rename whole diskettes, and copying - protection permitting - is similarly straightforward. Morex has, by force of circumstance, a growing interest in protection. The company's printer interface has been copied twice, which is bad enough, but failure to protect disk software could be the kiss of death for the system. To succeed, Morex clearly has to stimulate the development of decent business software, and this isn't going to happen if cloning disks is dead simple. One example of this is the way the Microdrive MERGE command has been doctored so the program can auto-run, which means that classic Spectrum auto-run stopper is no longer available. That aside, any file called AUTO and stored with a line number will auto-run. The operating system tends not to leave things lying around to be investigated by prying eyes. A number of other improvements have been made to commands. The ERASE command doesn't in fact erase (it does on the Microdrives) but follows the more efficient disk practice of simply freeing the 'erased' file's space. You can also use a wild card to erase more than one file at a time, ERASE "a" for example, erases all two-letter files beginning with 'a'. The CAT command operates just as with the Microdrive - simply specify a drive number and you get the disk directory. The drives, incidentally, are numbered 1-4 in the same way as Microdrives are numbered: again this means you can use the commands already learned. SOFTWARE Morex eventually intends to offer a full applications package with the drives, but the current disk versions of Tasword. Masterfile and Onmicalc are well worth having. Serious Spectrum software has always been limited by cassette storage, and Tasword and Masterfile in particular come into their own on disk. However, the complexities of Tasword have forced Morex to use a 'Minidos' for it rather than the full DOS, though it doesn't seem to limit it significantly. In any event, it's good to see lower profile software companies willing to license their products. The ultimate success of the drives will, of course, depend on more programs being written for the system, but Morex's bundled software should be enough to keep users happy for a fair while. VERDICT It's quite possible that this system is the best, and certainly the friendliest so far for the Spectrum. The end of April arrival date may spark off an interesting conflict, as it's also ITL Kathmill's deadline for implementing its Byte Drive 500 on the Spectrum. Should this match ITL's previous efforts, there will be two good disk systems for the Spectrum. One postscript - Morex is already accepting cheques for the disk system, but the company assures us that it won't be cashing the cheques until the drives are ready to be sent out. Apparently a large pile of firm orders with cheques attached is a persuasive tool when negotiating financial backing.

A table for your Spectrum - dual disk drrive power backs it up.

The prototype interface, complete with reset switch top.