30 Oct
2008
30 Oct
'08
7:46 p.m.
-- "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> wrote:
On 30 Oct 2008 at 7:44, Jules Richardson wrote:
Reminds me of the old Drivetec floppies--formatted with
an embedded
servo, so you didn't dare pick up used ones--they could be erased or
have errors that would render them useless. I've still got some of
the old Drivetec/Kodak drives and some media, but I'm not aware of
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Whoa, hold the phone here. Okay, I'm trying to solve a twenty-year-
old mystery. So, you say the media for these drives were made
by Kodak? Did they, per chance, have *triangular* notches in place
of the traditional rectangular ones?
I'm asking, because in 1985 or '86 I was at an electronics scrap
yard in L.A., and saw a *very* large heap of these kinda strange
looking floppy drives. I don't remember too much about them, but
I just remember they looked *weird*. The media was made by Kodak
(something I had never seen before), and the notch on the edge of
the floppy disk was *triangular*. I figured it was some special
media for bio-medical equipment, or for some bizarre photographic
process, or something.
Anyways, I never saw drives (or floppies) like that ever again,
and always wondered about it. They looked brand-new, and the
whole incident sticks out in my mind because I remember the
owner was mad as hell-- apparently he spent a small fortune
on these things, but nobody wanted them because they weren't
'standard'.
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30 Oct
30 Oct
8:21 p.m.
Drivetec was located somewhere around Orange county because a lot of
their engineering parts ended up at
ACP in Santa Ana. I got a few of their prototype drives that functioned
and a lot of castings and other stuff
that is in a box somewhere in my pile.
I don't recall that the diskettes had a notch. The ones I had did not
have the usual notch, which was compatable
with AT drives, etc. They could be inserted in regular drives and not
be writable because there was material
where the usual write protect was located for other floppy media. I
thin there was a sort of small notch on
the leading edge that was the write protect, but I don't recall a
triangular shape to it.
I had the 3.3mb media, which was eventually scaled up when Kodak tried
to keep the technology going. I
had a program to write the format and a special controller as well. I
thought that later versions could
reformat the media, but I could be wrong. There are or were others here
with more experience with
the Drivetec / Kodak drives.
I think the main thing that I recall was that they used a screw jack
type seek mechanism rather than the
usual method of a servo motor, and one would be reminded of a small
PerSci drive when you watched
it go. My specimens are too well buried to look any time soon.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Whoa, hold the phone here. Okay, I'm trying to solve a twenty-year-
old mystery. So, you say the media for these drives were made
by Kodak? Did they, per chance, have *triangular* notches in place
of the traditional rectangular ones?
I'm asking, because in 1985 or '86 I was at an electronics scrap
yard in L.A., and saw a *very* large heap of these kinda strange
looking floppy drives. I don't remember too much about them, but
I just remember they looked *weird*. The media was made by Kodak
(something I had never seen before), and the notch on the edge of
the floppy disk was *triangular*. I figured it was some special
media for bio-medical equipment, or for some bizarre photographic
process, or something.
Anyways, I never saw drives (or floppies) like that ever again,
and always wondered about it. They looked brand-new, and the
whole incident sticks out in my mind because I remember the
owner was mad as hell-- apparently he spent a small fortune
on these things, but nobody wanted them because they weren't
'standard'.
31 Oct
31 Oct
8:06 a.m.
On 30 Oct 2008 at 12:21, jim s wrote:
I think the main thing that I recall was that they
used a screw jack
type seek mechanism rather than the usual method of a servo motor, and
one would be reminded of a small PerSci drive when you watched it go.
My specimens are too well buried to look any time soon.
No servos, but two stepper motors. The first drives the main head
leadscrew through a slip coupling and provides "coarse" positioning.
The second stepper drives a fine-pitch leadscrew that works one end
of a fulcrum, the other end of which is attached to the slip coupling
on the leadscrew and provides "fine" positioning. Very clever--it's
fun to watch the drive working.
I talked to Kodak around 1988 and they swore that media had to be
factory-formatted (although you could format 360K media normally).
I've got the OEM manual for the 3.3MB drive and it's completely
silent about user formatting.
I'd love some details (or even some software) on formatting of the
3.3/6.6 media if anyone has any. It might be fun getting the old
things going again.
Cheers,
Chuck
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Whoa, hold the phone here. Okay, I'm trying to solve a twenty-year-
> old mystery. So, you say the media for these drives were made
> by Kodak? Did they, per chance, have *triangular* notches in place
> of the traditional rectangular ones?
>
> I'm asking, because in 1985 or '86 I was at an electronics scrap
> yard in L.A., and saw a *very* large heap of these kinda strange
> looking floppy drives. I don't remember too much about them, but
> I just remember they looked *weird*. The media was made by Kodak
> (something I had never seen before), and the notch on the edge of
> the floppy disk was *triangular*. I figured it was some special
> media for bio-medical equipment, or for some bizarre photographic
> process, or something.
>
> Anyways, I never saw drives (or floppies) like that ever again,
> and always wondered about it. They looked brand-new, and the
> whole incident sticks out in my mind because I remember the
> owner was mad as hell-- apparently he spent a small fortune
> on these things, but nobody wanted them because they weren't
> 'standard'.
>
>
>
>
30 Oct
30 Oct
8:48 p.m.
On Thu, 30 Oct 2008, jeff.kaneko at juno.com wrote:
Whoa, hold the phone here. Okay, I'm trying to
solve a twenty-year-
old mystery. So, you say the media for these drives were made
by Kodak? Did they, per chance, have *triangular* notches in place
of the traditional rectangular ones?
I'm asking, because in 1985 or '86 I was at an electronics scrap
yard in L.A., and saw a *very* large heap of these kinda strange
looking floppy drives. I don't remember too much about them, but
I just remember they looked *weird*. The media was made by Kodak
(something I had never seen before), and the notch on the edge of
the floppy disk was *triangular*. I figured it was some special
media for bio-medical equipment, or for some bizarre photographic
process, or something.
Anyways, I never saw drives (or floppies) like that ever again,
and always wondered about it. They looked brand-new, and the
whole incident sticks out in my mind because I remember the
owner was mad as hell-- apparently he spent a small fortune
on these things, but nobody wanted them because they weren't
'standard'.
The Amlyn drives also had extra/strange notches. They used 5 600 Oersted
5.25" ("1.2M") diskettes in a plastic caddy, and could switch diskettes
under program control. The drive was a little weird.
8:48 p.m.
On 30 Oct 2008 at 19:46, jeff.kaneko at juno.com wrote:
Whoa, hold the phone here. Okay, I'm trying to
solve a twenty-year-
old mystery. So, you say the media for these drives were made
by Kodak? Did they, per chance, have *triangular* notches in place
of the traditional rectangular ones?
The media I have is all Dysan with the usual rectangular notching.
I'm asking, because in 1985 or '86 I was at an
electronics scrap
yard in L.A., and saw a *very* large heap of these kinda strange
looking floppy drives. I don't remember too much about them, but
I just remember they looked *weird*. The media was made by Kodak
(something I had never seen before), and the notch on the edge of
the floppy disk was *triangular*. I figured it was some special
media for bio-medical equipment, or for some bizarre photographic
process, or something.
I can't say. What I recall of the Drivetec saga is that they went
bankrupt around 1985 or so and were bought by Kodak. I have a 6.6 MB
Kodak 1987 drive as well as a 2.4(?) Drivetec 1984 unit. They appear
to be almost identical, except that the Kodak drive is about 1/2"
shorter and doesn't have the additional 8-bin additional edge
connector on the PCB. Same bezel, however.
The Drivetec units could handle standard 360K media (with a benefit
of spinning it at 600 RPM). The high-density proprietary media used
a dual-stepper (coarse and fine positioning) and preformatted media
with an embedded servo recorded at 192 tpi (at least for the 2.4
models; I don't know what the 6.6 uses). For a floppy drive, it was
pretty cool, but it was that expensive pre-formatted media that
proved to be the stumbling block, I think. Drivetec also offered
their own controller that was pretty conventional, except for the
higher data rate.
Kodak did make a foray into commodity floppies, but were probably
done in by price competition and an insane warranty that said
something to the effect of "if your floppy ever fails, we'll not only
replace it but we'll recover the data." Too bad, because they *were*
pretty good floppies.
Cheers,
Chuck
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