19 Jan
2011
19 Jan
'11
8:03 a.m.
Chuck mentions:
I don't think anyone has mentioned that the SA4000
was remarkable in
that it was a hard disk that used a stepper motor as a positioner.
Up until that time, every hard drive I know of used either some sort
of servo or mechanical adder (e.g. Univac FASTRAND (okay, it's a
drum, but a movable head drum) or Bryant 4000). A hard drive using a
stepper was extremely unusual before the SA4000.
Without a doubt the stepper motor+band positioner was a huge step forward in economizing
microcomputer-oriented hard drives.
I figured that chronologically the taut-band floppy drives came first but now that I think
about it, maybe the SA4000 came first and the floppy application came later?
Certainly stepper-motor use was first in the floppies. At least, AFAIK :-)
Tim.
19 Jan
19 Jan
10:28 a.m.
On 19 Jan 2011 at 11:03, Shoppa, Tim wrote:
I figured that chronologically the taut-band floppy
drives came first
but now that I think about it, maybe the SA4000 came first and the
floppy application came later?
Certainly stepper-motor use was first in the floppies. At least, AFAIK
:-)
I'd have to see which came first on the taut-band issue. I don't
recall myself. My own system with the SA4008 had Micropolis
leadscrew floppies, but then Micropolis was a holdout. Tandon
certainly had taut-band floppies at the time.
I did a little searching and it seems that US patent 3,881,189
(Mayeda, filed 1973, published 1975) assigned to Sanyo seems to be
the operative one.
When I looked up other patents by Mayeda, it turned up 3,900,893
(1974/75) which certainly looks like it's the Bernoulli box
mechanism.
Funny, I'd always thought of both as US-origin inventions.
--Chuck
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