ka... ching!

[Al Kossow]

This is the same seller that had NOS Twiggy harnesses a month or two ago.
I was wondering if any drives were going to show up.

They appear to be pretty late serial numbers too (5xxx)

Fortunately, I got all of the museum's Twiggy media read when I
restored one before we put it on exhibit.

http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102747604

Sad they didn't take a picture of it for the catalog.

The drives are really nasty to keep running. Good luck finding belts (fiber
required, like SA800s). The read channel circuitry is baroque. The felt pads
like to tear or fall off at inopportune times. Fixing the pad on the rear
head is a nightmare (complete disassembly).

I ended up making special cleaning disks
cutting a slot in the other side.

and.. they have a weird track spacing. Someone was going to try to modify a
Kodak drive to read them. I even formatted and sent them some media, putting
it into normal sleeves, but I don't think they got very far.



On 10/1/16 7:54 AM, Adrian Graham wrote:
> On 01/10/2016 15:42, "js at cimmeri.com" <js at cimmeri.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 10/1/2016 9:19 AM, Al Kossow wrote:
>>> http://www.ebay.com/itm/291894250804
>>
>> I don't get it.  Would someone explain to me how a couple of old, dirty,
>> untested, belt driven floppy drives are worth this kind of money?   And
>> why??
>>
>> There's actual bidding going on.  That's not just an asking price.
> 
> Because they're actual Twiggy drives from a Lisa 1. A lot of them were
> chucked during the Lisa 2 upgrades offered by Apple because the Twiggys were
> slow and unreliable, but it's a great example of how not to design a floppy
> drive. If I had deep pockets I'd be bidding too.
>