Scan of Micro Peripherals Inc MPI 91/92 Product Manual Avail?

Bill Degnan billdegnan at gmail.com
Sat Oct 6 00:05:16 CDT 2018


>
> Of course, neither Tandon nor MPI produced a drive that was even close
> to Micropolis.  But almost nobody was as expensive as Micropolis either.
>  Micropolis never gave up, IIRC, on its 4-steps-per-cylinder precision
> leadscrew setup.
>
> I've got a Micropolis 1115-VI drive here and it's a heavy wonder to
> behold.   The whole stepper motor, leadscrew and head assembly pivots on
> the drive door--usually, the stepper is attached to the main body of the
> drive.
>
> Further, it's a drive that features a microcontroller for drive spindle
> speed control (no adjustments) as well as for providing a "buffered
> seek" capability.   Fire step pulses at it at rates slower than 6
> msec/step and it behaves normally.  Fire pulses at between 3-5 msec and
> the drive goes into buffered seek mode.
>
> It's a wonder to behold and, IIRC, was substantially more expensive than
> anyone else's 5.25" floppy drives.   Sort of the antithesis of Jugi
> Tandon's "make 'em cheap" approach.
>
> No wonder Micropolis went out of the floppy business.
>
> --Chuck
>

Not sure if you have ever compared MPI, Tandon, and Micropolis versions of
the Commodore CBM 8050 dual IEEE disk drives.  Each had a totally different
approach to the same job, the diagnostics used to rest them were totally
different.
Bill

>


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