Commodore 8050

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The Commodore 8050 and Commodore 8250 were dual unit 5¼" floppy disk drives for Commodore International computers. They used a wide rectangular steel case form similar to that of the Commodore 4040, and used the IEEE-488 interface common to Commodore PET/CBM computers.

The 8050 was a single sided drive, whereas the 8250 could use both sides of a disk simultaneously. Both used a "quad" density format storing approximately 0.5 megabyte per side. The density of media was similar to later PC high density floppy disks, but the 8050 and 8250 could not use PC high density disks reliably. Since "quad" density disks were rare even at the time, users quickly found that typical double density floppy disks had enough magnetic media density to work in these drives.

These drives were not dual mode, so they could not read or write disks formatted by the more common lower capacity Commodore 1541 or Commodore 4040 models.

Some variants of these drives existed. The Commodore 8250LP was the 8250 in a lower profile, tan-colored case. The Commodore SFD-1001 was a single drive version of the 8250 in a Commodore 1541 style case (similarly to the Commodore 2031LP), often used by bulletin board systems for their physical similarity to 1541s and high capacity and speed.

[edit] References

• Commodore Knowledge Base
• Technical comparison of Commodore floppy drives (with drive capacities)

Floppy disk drives for Commodore 8-bit systems
8" IEEE:	8020
5¼" IEEE:	2031 • 2040 • 3040 • 4031 • 4040 • 8050 • 8250 • SFD-1001
5¼" serial:	1540 • 1541 • 1551 • 1570 • 1571 • 1572 • MSD SD
3½" serial:	1581 • CMD FD