Disk & floppy systems (Larken, AERCO, Oliger)
Floppy/disk systems and interfaces — Larken, AERCO, Oliger, Zebra FDD, disk drives and their DOSes.
142 threads · 1038 messages · 2002-11-01 → 2026-09-16
The list has spent two decades mapping the crowded T/S 2068 disk landscape: Larken, AERCO, John Oliger (JLO), Ramex, and the Timex Portugal FDD3000 family (sold in the US as the Zebra disk system and cloned in Poland as the Unipolbrit FDD/FDD6000). Yahoo-era threads settled the basics. Jack Boatwright listed the four Larken DOS cartridges (L3 for Larken, R3 for Ramex, O3 for Oliger, A3 for AERCO). Al Hartman and zniedzwiedz traced the Timex lineage from the silver three-box system (drive, controller, power supply) to the single-case FDD3000 with a 64K controller, and Don Dindang pointed out that a 2010 eBay "Larken" listing was really an AERCO system (Luis Alberto D'Ardis won it). Luke Perry gave away 60+ 5.25" JLO disks in 2008, which prompted zxbruno to explain imaging FDD3000 disks with cpdread and John Elliot's Timex2Pl3 converter for +3 format. In 2011-12 Neil (pxx1_2000_32724) and Rod H populated a bare Larken 256K RAMdisk board from Eric Johnson's leftover stock. Eduardo Fuentes started redrawing the JLO printer, cartridge and bus-expander PCBs in EagleCAD, but held off publishing until John Oliger could be reached for permission.
The groups.io era moved from identifying hardware to preserving it. Neil C. got both a Larken and an Oliger system running after replacing a 1770 controller chip, with help from Richard Burt, Paulo Leite and Willie Jones. Claudius and Carl Miles identified the Timex "TI" interface variants (black/black for TC2048, black/silver for TC2068, silver for TS2068) and noted that every TS2068 TI ROM dump in circulation is corrupt. In late 2022 David Anderson imaged Joe Vandezande's Zebra 3" disks with CPCDiskXP and a Greaseweazle and posted them to archive.org; Johnny Red (Joao Encarnado) suggested the TOMATO tool and converted a Q-Bert clone that then ran on real hardware. In 2023 David worked out the JLO DOS directory format, with Eduardo identifying the side-flag quirk and the Oliger Disk Manager. David also confirmed that no Larken emulation exists (only FUSE emulates the FDD3000) and posted the Larken manuals on archive.org. In the CP/M thread, David, Gustavo Pane and Johnny Red explained that FDD3000 CP/M runs on the drive unit itself, which is a full Z80 computer with two RS-232 ports, while the paged ROM lives in the small TI interface.
The newest arc is reproduction hardware. Willie Jones cloned the JLO A/B disk boards, expansion bus and an improved printer board. RichJ reviewed a complete Willie-built JLO system favorably in 2024, though Goteks still would not work with it. ChazzMan began a PCB re-layout of the Larken RAMdisk. Carl Miles's 2025 "Interface Zero" board puts an Interface 1 clone and a Spectrum ROM switcher on the 2068 to bring up Microdrives; Jeff Burrell warned that IF1 system variables conflict with TS2068 ones.
Several threads in this cluster only drifted into disk talk: Yahoo file-upload notices (which included a Larken Disk Menu article), the Zeus/monitor/Tetris thread (which ended on Interface 1bis), the 2008 "average age" and "one big mistake Timex made" threads (DivIDE and CP/M asides), the 2007 Spectrum-128-vs-2068 newcomer questions (which turned up John Oliger's old mailing address), and Lon Hildreth's TS2060/TS2070 Microdrive documents.
Key threads
- Larken Ramdisk (#1666 on groups.io) — Yahoo-era build of a bare Larken 256K RAMdisk board; includes Jack Boatwright's list of the L3/R3/O3/A3 Larken DOS cartridges.
- Timex Drives (#1802 on groups.io) — Lays out the Timex Portugal / Zebra / FDD3000 / Unipolbrit lineage and what a 2068 needs to use the drives.
- Oliger Public Domain disks (#1876 on groups.io) — Luke Perry's JLO disk giveaway and zxbruno's cpdread + Timex2Pl3 method for preserving FDD3000 disks.
- JLO Disk System (#1665 on groups.io) — Eduardo Fuentes's EagleCAD redraw of the JLO boards, held back until John Oliger could give permission.
- Larken System Software (#1459 on groups.io) — Neil C. and others bring Larken and Oliger systems back to life and look for the Larken system disk.
- Zebra FDD 3” sk images (#1200 on groups.io) — Greaseweazle/CPCDiskXP imaging of Zebra FDD disks, posted to archive.org, plus extraction tools.
- Mystery Interface- Unable to Identify (#1218 on groups.io) — Identifies the FDD3000 TI interface variants and finds that the TS2068 TI ROM dumps are corrupt.
- Math help, please :) (#911 on groups.io) — Reverse-engineering the JLO DOS directory-entry format.
- CP/M source available for the T/S2068?! (#965 on groups.io) — Explains that FDD3000 CP/M runs on the drive unit, which has its own Z80 and RS-232 ports.
- JLO Disk Boards & Printer Board (#565 on groups.io) — Willie Jones's cloned JLO disk, expansion and improved printer boards.
- My review of the Willie Jones 2068 JLO disk system clone (#512 on groups.io) — A user's hands-on review of a complete reproduction JLO system.
All threads (142)
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