FDD 3 Disk Drive system

Four piece disk drive system designed for the TC 2068. Base system included disk controller, disk drive, system connector and twister board to convert the TS 2068 to the Spectrum bus.

The system uses 3″ single-sided floppy disk drives. Each side holds 160K; the disk must be flipped to read/write the other side. The controller has a Z80 CPU, 16K RAM and two RS-232c serial ports.

TOS (Timex Operating System) loads into the controller’s RAM and extends the commands built-in to the TS 2068.

TOS allows full control over disk access including saving and loading of programs, and random or sequential file handling of data. TOS supports an MSDOS-like tree directory structure with named diskettes, named files (8 character names plus a 3 character file extension) with attributes (protection and catalog), path names, wildcard file selection and up to 16 file or serial channels open at the same time. New commands added to Timex BASIC by TOS include:

• CAT*
• LOAD*
• SAVE*
• OPEN*
• PRINT*
• INPUT*
• LIST*
• RESTORE*
• MERGE*
• GOTO*
• GOSUB*
• DRAW*
• CLOSE*
• FORMAT*
• ERASE*
• LET*
• ATTR*
• MOVE*

Each unit is about 4.5″ wide x 2″ high x 6″ deep.

Zebra Systems and English Micro Connection both imported this disk drive system to the United States.