7 Mar
2001
7 Mar
'01
11 a.m.
> 3" (think Amstrad)
On Thu, 8 Mar
2001, Tony Duell wrote:
I don't think Amstrad designed the drive. They
just used it. I think it
was a Japanese design -- certainly Hitachi made some of the early drives.
Most of the disks I have seem to be Maxell.
Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that the drive was made by Amstrad, just
that for most (USA) members of this list, the Amstrad is the machine that
they would be familiar with that used such a drive.
The Tatung Einstein (a machine that's been
discussed here recently) has 1
3" drive as standrd, and a space for a second one. It was almost unique
among UK home computers in that there was no tape interface (or a similar
machine with a tape interface) -- disks were standard.
The (somewhat uncommon) disk drive for the Oric was also a 3" unit.
After the 3.5" drive became the 'standard', 3" drives were available
fairly cheaply over here (a lot cheaper than 5.25" or 3.5" units).
Various companies made external drive units (there was certainly one for
the BBC micro) using 3" drive.
Thank you for the additions to the 3" list!
FWIW, the 3" disk is a much nicer mechanical
design than the 3.5" disk.
The shutter of the latter is (IMHO) very badly designed....
I attribute that to the 3" shutter being part of the original design, but
I think that the shutter of the 3.5" was a later addition!
I have some very old 3.5" diskettes that are branded "Shugart", but I
don't know who did the actual manufacturing of the diskettes. They not
only don't have a shutter, they obviously weren't designed to have one.
--
Fred Cisin cisin(a)xenosoft.com
XenoSoft http://www.xenosoft.com
PO Box 1236 (510) 558-9366
Berkeley, CA 94701-1236