22 Oct
2000
22 Oct
'00
4:46 a.m.
On Sat, 21 Oct 2000, Wayne M. Smith wrote:
I recently acquired two of these 5 1/4 inch drives,
which have the garage-door type opening (and very low
ser. nos.). Does anyone know the specs for these
drives? I assume they are probably SS/SD. They look
like they may be what was used for the Atari 801. Is
this right?
I first saw (and bought) the MPI B51 drives at the 3rd West Coast Computer
Faire (that was the one time that they held it in LA.) They were the
first 5.25" drive that I ever saw after the Shugart SA400. We (Elcompco)
were worried about whether they would work for TRS-80, but they did very
nicely.
They were single sided, 40 track (48 TPI), with faster step than the
Shugarts. IIRC, the B52 was DS, B91? was SS 96TPI, and B92? was DS 96TPI.
The door was a manual closure, and would slam open when you press the
button. But the people who refused to hold the door while it was
opening were the same people who would "flip" the doors (and break
them) on Shugarts and Tandons. We replaced fewer doors on the MPIs than
on the Shugarts and Tandons.
[Richard: although many people did put them in their PC's, IBM did NOT
use them. IBM used first Tandons, and then later some CDCs]
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236