Wafadrive packaging Rotronics Wafadrive shown with two Wafa tapes, a blank 64 kB and software release tape Front and back of a Rotronics 64 kB Wafa tape The Rotronics Wafadrive is a magnetic tape storage peripheral launched in late 1984 for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as the ''ZX81 Colou ...

home computer. Each tape is a continuous loop, unlike cassette tape. It was intended to compete with Sinclair's ZX Interface 1 and ZX Microdrive. The Wafadrive comprises two continuous loop

stringy floppy An Exatron Stringy Floppy (cover removed) designed for use with the TRS-80 Model 1 The Exatron Stringy Floppy (or ESF) is a continuous-loop tape drive developed by Exatron. History The company introduced an S-100 stringy floppy drive at th ...

tape drives, an

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard originally introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' ('' data terminal equipment'') suc ...

interface and Centronics parallel port. The drives can run at two speeds: High speed (for seeking) and low speed (for reading/writing, which was significantly slower than that of Microdrives). The cartridges (or "wafers"), the same as those used in Entrepo stringy floppy devices for other microcomputers, are physically larger than Microdrive cartridges. They were available in three different capacities, nominally 16 kB, 64 kB or 128 kB. The larger sizes had the disadvantage of slower access, due to the longer length of tape. The same drive mechanism, manufactured by BSR, and cartridges were used in at least the following similar devices: * Quick Data Drive (QDD), designed to connect to the cassette port of Commodore 64 and VIC-20 home computers. * A&J Micro Drive System 100, for TRS-80 Model 100 and it's clones (Kyotronic KC-85, NEC PC-8201 & PC-8300, Olivetti M10), connected via the RS-232 port.

External links

Rotronics Wafadrive User Manual

meulie.net Rotronics Wafadrive User Manual

* ttp://www.worldofspectrum.org/hardware/feat1.html Review of Waferdrive in ''Your Sinclair'', Issue 5, May 1986 {{Magnetic tape data formats Computer storage devices Home computer peripherals ZX Spectrum