Rotronics Wafadrive
Tape Data Recovery - Rotronics Wafadrive
The Rotronics Wafadrive was a peripheral used for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer as an alternative to Sinclair Microdrive. Unlike ZX Microdrive, Wafadrives did not require the interface 1. The unit had two built-in stringy floppy tape drives, an RS-232 interface, and Centronics parallel port, all in one.
The Wafadrive could run at two speeds. It had high speed for seeking and low speed for reading/writing. Microdrives offered comparatively faster read/write speeds. The cartridges used in Wafadrives were larger than those in Microdrives. The cartridges were available in three different capacities, 16 kB, 64 kB or 128 kB. The larger the memory, the more is the tape in the cartridge and the longer it’ll take to access the files.
Advantages of Wafadrives over Microdrives
- With Wafadrive, users could store programs as files on a wafer.
- It had a friendlier operating system and easy-to-understand command syntax.
- Wafadrives are more reliable because there is more tape in it than used in a Microdrive cartridge.
- Since Wafadrives do not require the interface 1, they are comparatively cheaper than the Microdrives. The entire unit was sold for a price little higher than the Microdrives without interface 1. Plus, users had the advantage of getting two drives on a Wafadrive.
- It is easy to transfer Basic programs from cassette onto Wafadrive. Machine code programs, however, might create problems, especially if they’re very large and don’t leave around 2k for the Wafadrive Operating System.
- Any full size printer can be connected via the Centronics and RS232 interfaces.
