From: "Ron Hudson"
<ron.hudson(a)sbcglobal.net>
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Tom Jennings wrote:
There used to be a popular folk myth that all single sided diskettes
actually double sided ones that had failed testing on one side.
I find it hard to believe that any company could be profitable
with THAT high a failure rate!
I once worked in memorex in the tape plant where open reel tape was made
and that is exactly how it was done, raw tape was run through error
detecting
machines and sorted.
Hi
This thinking always reminds me of a story from Intel.
When they first started making 2716's, TI was biting
into their 2708 market with the 2758's. Intel fought
back with their version of the 2508. These were early
half bad failures from the 2716 line. They even had
a H/L pin to select which half to use. When they
first started, they sold for quite a bit less than
the 2716's ( about $30 ea ). Over time, the 2716's
pricing went down to around $4 someplace. I got a kick
out of seeing one of their price list showing the
2508's still being sold for $32 ea.
While I suspect that originally the half bad parts
made sense but at the premium price they got for these,
I suspect that they later just took fully tested
2716's and relabeled them.
I wonder how many purchasing agents realized that
the 2716's worked just as well.
Dwight