Vortex Winchester Drive
A HardDiscDrive (HDD) solution for the CPC.
Actually the first for the CPC.
Produced by the German company Vortex
The Harddisc was build about 1986. It have the same cases like the F1-S and the F1-D. A big Power Supply which have about 1,5 Kilograms gives the power to the Harddrive. The Harddrive was shipped with the Powersupply The Harddrive itself, a built in 5,25" DD Diskdrive with 720KB and a Controller which was used for being the MFM Controller with two ports for two MFM Harddiscs, two DD Floppys and a ROM board which give place for 2 Roms, which held the VDOS 2.0
The Contoller get the Power from the Harddisc.
You can connect up to two 60MB MFM Drives which are supported by the VDOS 2.0.
But the normal setup was with a 20 MB MFM Drive.
A Software Package consists of a few helpful tools:
- LowLevel Format
- Partition tools
- Format partitions
- Patch for CPM 2.2 and 3.0 (Plus) to support the Drive
- File/Disccopy Tools
- Diskformat
- Hexeditor
- and a few more...
Technical
CPCAI magazine claims the device has a WD1010 Winchester controller inside.
The WD1010 has different commands and communication method compared to the Dobbertin (which appears to use SASI) and modern IDE (which uses ATA).
Therefore the software is not compatible with the Dobbertin or modern IDE drives.
