24 Sep
2005
24 Sep
'05
12:18 a.m.
On 9/23/2005, jpero at sympatico.ca wrote:
Look for Epson 3.5" drives, they are plastic, have
to remove the
metal sleeve to see this black plastic chassis, also the head sevro
is stepper with tiny, tiny fine toothed rack (thin bronze) & prinion
(also tiny dia). Not suitable for heavy use.
It's actually pretty amazing, to see what lengths vendors would go to do cost-reduce
components.
Portable Smith Corona word processors used a 2.8" drive that worked the heads via a
follower than ran in a spiral groove molded into a plastic disk that was driven by the
spindle motor through a clutch. Basically, pulsing the clutch caused the head to move in
a continuous spiral pattern from the beginning of the diskette to the end. Sort of a
windshield-wiper auto-completion mechanism. You could read or write the entire diskette
(about 60K (MFM), if memory serves), but nothing less than that. A gutless wonder if
there ever was one. It was actually pretty robust.
Cheers,
Chuck