The oddest floppy drive I ever saw was a Helitron drive, at
Helitron Inc, in Boston, when I worked for this little company
CSSN, Inc. Helitron was making the wiring harness for a computer
CSSN (attempted to) sell.
I can't recall the guy's name, but I chatted with him about the
drive. He claims that he was the inventor of the basic floppy
mechanism (circular media in an envelope mounted temporarily in a
frame, etc) and that IBM stole it from him after meeting with
them. The drive I saw of his had a knob on front that selected
the track! Apparently the drive only read/wrote within a track,
and did not electrically select tracks.
While I clearly remember the knob, I know or recall nothing else
about it. I think it was in a cabinet, more-or-less 8" full size,
vertically. Gold anodized? or painted a similar light color. Just
a bunch of them sitting on the shelf.
This was around 1980, maybe 1979. No idea whatever happened to
them. After making the CSSN box (s100, z80, BASF 6172 3-platter
disk, Konan controller, DEI tape, Alloy Eng. interface, PDOS,
etc), and schlepping the unreliable thing to the first COMDEX
(1980?) I never saw them again.
tomj
Various google searches were weak, but found this address:
HELITRON inc.
560 harrison ave
boston 02i 18
From a PDF containing a little ad for them, apparently
reduced to
calculator sales/repair? I know they had fallen far, the shop was
small, a mess, and the guy was sharp, knowledgable, and resentful
of how he feels he was treated.
www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_095/TECH_V095_S0401_P002.pdf -
(Lower left corner, a small ad)