The Poor Man’s Disc, part 2
or, a Review of IKON’s “Hobbit”,
a Mini-Digital Cassette system for Nascoms

by Les Pickstock.

Unable to afford the divorce that would accompany the purchase of a floppy disk system I had for a year or more been looking for a superior alternative to the normal tape system of the Nascom. I was not after speed so much (I’m fairly content with the 2400 baud/​zero errors I get with the Cottis/​Blandford tape interface on my N-1) as software control of read/​write, named programs and files and above all the ability to have true file-handling with the standard ROM BASIC.

The Philips Mini-Digital Cassette Recorder had caught my eye a few times and seamed to offer great potential. It has a transfer speed of 6000 baud, uses digitally-certified mini-cassettes, is about 4ins cube in size and has a very good name in industry for reliability and low error rates (the irrecoverable error rate is quoted as 1 in 10 to the power 9- a thousand times better than floppy discs!)

The only company that originally produced a full working system seemed to be Currah, but only for 6502 based systems. The basic cost of just the Mini-DCR was about £90, but this needed an interface and control software. I felt rather daunted by this task and so for a while gave up the idea, using various software patches to try and overcome the inherent drawbacks of the standard tape system.

Then almost simultaneously two Mini-DCR systems appeared for the Nascom. One by C.I.E.L. of Edinburgh, the other by Grange Electronics of Nimborne in Dorset. Both appeared to be fairly close to what I was after except for two things:

1. price- they’re both about £200
2. neither have file-handling extensions for BASIC, just the ability to store named programs.

Then about two months ago an advert appeared in PCW offering a system for Nascoms for an incredible £99 plus Maggie’s bit. So after ringing the firm, IKON Computer Products and speaking to a very friendly Dave Tucker, the owner, I ordered one.

What you get for the money is a Mini-DCR wired to a very simple 1-chip-and-a-few-resistors interface, 2 2708’s with the control software and a cassette. Also a small but adequate instruction manual. A case is available as an extra, though as far as I know it will only take one drive. Connexion (British Telecom standard spelling-Honest!) is very simple. It requires 120mA @ +12v and 10ma @ +5v, so can easily be driven by any existing PSU. Control is via one port of the PIO. Two DCRs can