Weird disk drive

Subject: Re: Weird disk drive From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 05:03:11 -0600 To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts <cctalk at classiccmp.org>, sellam at vintagetech.com Sellam Ismail wrote: OK, questions: 1) Any sign of any additional drive boards within the case or anything that might be ROM on the drive PCBs themselves? 2) Does the disk keep spinning forever when you put it in, or just do a few revolutions and stop? 3) When you put a disk in, do the heads step at all? Or does it just sit on track 0 all the time? And some initial guesses: 1) Homebrew case which someone just never got around to finishing and adding a data connector to. 2) Commercial prototype for testing various aspects (PSU heat dissipation, drive mounting, power socket mounting, case paint etc.) 3) Tester for a *floppy disk* manufacturer (i.e. does my product foul a stock drive mechanism, does it fall apart in the heat of a typical enclosure etc.) 4) Degausser (as you say) or other form of disk eraser 5) TV / movie prop I'm quite liking the first and last ones - although the last one's probably only credible if the disk keeps spinning forever when you put it in. Some form of eraser might be possible if the thing's just wired to write junk; even if the heads don't move I suppose someone could have built a "poor man's eraser" which just trashes track 0 :-) Commercial 'pre-production' type products (2 and 3 above) do seem less likely - not because they wouldn't have existed, but because I'm surprised someone would bother to save them and/or they wouldn't have had a data connector added later to make a fully functioning unit. Can you take the route of asking the person you got it from - and if they weren't the original owner, following the chain back to the person who was? cheers Jules