Floppy disk data separators...

[Herbert C. Williams]

While I do understand that an external data separator is a good thing, I was one of those who did a design using the internal data separator using the WD1771 (and later National) chip.  It was on a M6800 system I did some work on, and it seemed to work OK for me.  I was using (originally) 35 track Seagate drives, but later used 40 track ones.

I used 256 byte sectors (10 per track).  If I git an error, I just did a retry.  No real problems.

Just my experience.  I still have a system operational (I haven't turned it on in a few years, but may soon).  I also interfaced various hard disks.  What fun.   It was 1976 and also worked on Qume (daisywheel) printers (it only takes a single PIA to interface to them!).

I'm sure that others will have different views on data separators.  My experience was a bit different, I don't know what I did different (maybe it was something!).