Vortex Disc Drives

Disc drives from Vortex.

F1

A 5.25" disc drive. 80 tracks and 708Kb.

• F1 - S Single 5.25" drive with controller.
• F1 - Z Single 5.25" drive without controller.
• F1 - D Double 5.25" drive with controller.

The disc drive also was available as an extended versions :

• F1 - XRS which also contains a RS232 interface.
• F1 - X which can be updated with a RS232 interface.

On the F1-S/D Controllers the Disc operation system VDOS 1.0 on ROM was included.

On the F1-X/XRS Controllers the Disc operation system VDOS 2.0 on ROM was included.

M1

A 3.5" disc drive. 80 tracks and 708KB Formatted per Disk.

• M1 - S Single 3.5" drive with controller.
• M1 - Z Single 3.5" drive without controller.
• M1 - D Double 3.5" drive with controller.

The disc drive also was available as an extended version:

• M1-XRS which also contains a RS232 interface.
• M1-X which can be updated with a RS232 interface.

On the M1-S/D Controllers the Disc operation system VDOS 1.0 on ROM was included.

On the M1-X/XRS Controllers the Disc operation system VDOS 2.0 on ROM was included.

Tape

• Tape
• 
  Software

The Vortex disc drive controller

The Vortex disc drive controler was similar to Amstrads own controller on DDI-1.

It used the same controler chip, the NEC765.

It has VDOS on ROM.

I/O Ports

 Standard Addresses (same as used by AMSDOS):
   FB7Eh 765 FDC (internal) Status Register (R)
   FB7Fh 765 FDC (internal) Data Register (R/W)
 Special Addresses (secondary FDC):
   FBF6h 765 FDC (Vortex,ext) Status Register (Read)
   FBF7h 765 FDC (Vortex,ext) Data Register (R/W)
 (The Special addresses are mentioned in the manual
 for the Vortex -X drives) (but apparently they are referring
 to other/older Vortex drives, not the -X drives)

The Special addresses are used only on CPC 664/6128 and only if the Vortex drive includes an FDC chip.

• Note1: The -Z and -X drives do not include FDC chips.
• Note2: The -S and -D drives do reportedly work only on CPC 464 (?).

So, not sure if/when the Special addresses are used at all?

 RS232 Ports (for -X drives with RS232)
   FADC/FADD=Serial Data/Control
   FBDC/FBDD/FBDF=Counter 0/1/Mode.
 So it's probably compatible with Amstrad/Pace 
 (and probably also including, but not using,
 Channel B Ports FADE/FADF and FBDE).

Vortex Disk Format

Sector numbers are 01h..09h (same as AMSDOS IBM Format, but with a 9th sector) Disks are Double-Sided, Double Density, 80 Tracks, 9 Sectors Total capacity is 720K (704K available):

• First 9K contain two System Tracks (eg. CP/M Bootstrap)
• Next 4K contain directory (see Note)
• Next 704K are data (allocated in 4K blocks) (aka 4K clusters)
• Last 3K are unused (due to 4K allocation size)

Note: According to the manual, the directory can hold 128 entries under VDOS2.0 (whole 4K used), but only 64 entries under VDOS1.0 (only half of the 4K area used).

The Vortex -Z drives do not seem to include any VDOS ROM (so they do support only normal 40-Track AMSDOS Formats, but NOT the 80-Track Vortex format).

Pictures

• The Vortex F1 Drives
• 
  F1-Z Disc Drive
• 
  F1-D Disc Drive

• The Vortex Disc Drive Controller
• 
  A anonymous box houses the controller
• 
  Look inside the controller
• 
  Controller with VDOS mounted

Manuals

• Vortex Floppy Disk Station F1 (German) Manual

• Vortex X-Laufwerke (German) Manual