photocopied disk
Roger MacNicol
who worked for a French company, they had a problem with a program
on punched cards written for them by a US subsidiary. The programs never
worked when loaded in France but the US systems house swore blind that
they did at their end. Eventually, in exasperation, someone followed the
working set of cards from the US to France. At French customs, they observed
a customs official remove a few cards at random from the deck. Apparently,
the french customs are entitled to remove a sample from any bulk item (such
as grain), so a few cards from a large consignment shouldn't matter, should it?
--
Roger MacNicol, Software Engineer
Vmark Software, Inc., 5 Strathmore Road, Natick, MA 01760, USA
Internet: uvmark!ro...@merk.com, UUCP: uunet!merk.com!uvmark!roger
Phone: (508) 655-3700, Fax: (508) 655-8395
Walter Hunt
Then there's a former supervisor who sat down to use a Mac in the
office. Put his floppy in. Didn't mount. Put another floppy in. Same problem.
Tried three or four times before asking for some help.
You guessed it. No floppy drive. All the floppies were just falling into
the Mac, where they had to be retrieved later by the guy the supervisor called.
They taped up the hole.
--
Walter Hunt
wal...@aimla.com uunet!aimla!walter
OptImage Interactive Services Company, L.P.
Adam Elman
company which will remain nameless.
There was a woman there who had become very used to working with
Macintoshes, but needed a PC to standardize with the rest of the
department.
One day, she walked into our office complaining that her computer had
hung up after she had exited from WordPerfect. She complained that it
was "just sitting there, not doing anything."
So I went in, and of course, sitting on the screen was
C:\>_
I spent about the next three minutes trying to explain to her the idea
of DOS so she could copy files from her hard drive to a floppy until I
realized that it wasn't going to do her any good...so I just did it
for her.
Oh well...
Adam Elman
elmanad@leland
Joe Morris
>(Sorry if this one has been posted before). I heard this story from someone
>who worked for a French company, they had a problem with a program
>on punched cards written for them by a US subsidiary. The programs never
>worked when loaded in France but the US systems house swore blind that
>they did at their end. Eventually, in exasperation, someone followed the
>working set of cards from the US to France. At French customs, they observed
>a customs official remove a few cards at random from the deck. Apparently,
>the french customs are entitled to remove a sample from any bulk item (such
>as grain), so a few cards from a large consignment shouldn't matter, should it?
Yup, that happened, OK. The shipper was Oak Ridge National Labs, to their
opposite numbers in France. The cards contained (unclassified) data.
I may have previously posted it myself; I've used this story for years
as an example of what can happen when you use a (seemingly) low-tech
artifact in a high-tech application...and let non-tech people have
access to it.
Joe Morris
Life...
> Then there's a former supervisor who sat down to use a Mac in the
>office. Put his floppy in. Didn't mount. Put another floppy in. Same problem.
>Tried three or four times before asking for some help.
> You guessed it. No floppy drive. All the floppies were just falling into
>the Mac, where they had to be retrieved later by the guy the supervisor called.
This reminds me of a story told to me by a friend of mine about a
"friend" of his. It was also regarding a drive, but it was an external
drive with the insides removed, referred to as "Jaws". Using this, he'd
dupe people into putting their commercial software into it, then saying
the drive ate the disk, and it was unretreivable. This guy wasn't a
pirate, but an out-and-out thief!
> They taped up the hole.
That of another read on here. The slot on the Mac was taped up with
paper covering the slot with writing saying "Don't insert disk here."
People would still force their disks through the opening, eventually
even through duct tape. I think they said a metal plate was eventually
mounted over it.
>Walter Hunt
>wal...@aimla.com uunet!aimla!walter
--
/// ____ \\\ 1 AREA: Infinite As far as anyone can make out.
| |/ / \ \| | 2 IMPORTS: None It is impossible to import things into
\\_|\____/|_// an infinite area there being no outside
DON'T \_\\\/ PANIC to import things in from.
gberigan `-' unlinfo 3 EXPORTS: None See Imports.
Jon Konrath
Not too far back, I used to consult at a regional campus, and had to help in
one of the labs used for computer literacy, and worked at night when all
of the middle-aged businesspeople who had never seen a computer decided
to take a stupid dos course in hopes of raising their salaries exponentially.
Well, I can pull disk stories out of the woodwork for hours...lemme think
of a couple...
The mac plus user who inserted a disk in the computer and insisted it wouldnt
boot. Nope, they sure won't boot with the disk upside down and backward...
Off to the dealer...
We had some Leading Edge model d's. I had a person who claimed they put
their A and B disks in and the computer wouldnt boot. another person
said it looked like the drives were empty and the machine must have
eaten the disk. I looked and found both of the disks....wedged in the
narrow crack between the two half-height drives.
Then the PS/2. Had a guy/gal (didnt catch them) put a disk in, and without
pushing the release button, grabbed the disk where that little notch is
and pulled it out. Yes, REAL HARD. The metal shutter was inside the
computer, and other users managed to really wedge it in later. Also a
trip to maintenance..
I won't even get into keyboards and orange juice in the labs...
-Jon
--
Jonathan R. Konrath, consultant, University Computing Services
Jkon...@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Ultrix)
Jkon...@dakota.ucs.indiana.edu (NeXTmail) Trying to break the
(812) 333-2254 (Voice) VMS habit...
David Morgenstern
>computer, and other
It doesn't take much to have the shutters come off -- they come
off on their own. At a recent BMUG meeting, someone showing a 3.5
Sony Optical drive kept having trouble getting the drive to mount.
I looked at the disk finally (you can't grab these in the drive)
and saw that it was missing the shutter...
david
--
***** David Morgenstern (a.k.a. BMUG CheerLeader) *****
*** snail: 319 Gonzalez Drive, San Francisco, CA 94132 ***
* CIS: 72030,1607 AOL: daviD eM voice: 415-338-1403 *
***************************************************************
Joshua Bell
>
>Not too far back, I used to consult at a regional campus, and had to help in
>one of the labs used for computer literacy, and worked at night when all
>of the middle-aged businesspeople who had never seen a computer decided
>to take a stupid dos course in hopes of raising their salaries exponentially.
>
>Well, I can pull disk stories out of the woodwork for hours...lemme think
>of a couple...
>
>The mac plus user who inserted a disk in the computer and insisted it wouldnt
>boot. Nope, they sure won't boot with the disk upside down and backward...
>Off to the dealer...
On a related note, the MicroLab I work in has a weekly problem with our
Mac SE's. Some user will fail to notice that there's already a boot disk
in one of the two floppy drives, and manage to stuff their disk in there
with it. Sigh... Once a week. Not kidding.
TTFN/TTYL... Joshua B-)
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| "Comedy, for me, it's cheaper than therapy." R. Williams |
| |
| jsb...@acs.ucalgary.ca Internet Academic Computing Services |
| be...@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (alternate) University of Calgary, Canada |
| |
M14...@mwvm.mitre.org
Since I haven't seen this posted, a friend of mine had a saying I liked:
"There are *eight* ways to put that diskette in the drive--
seven of them wrong."
Of course, if you include folding and removing the jacket, you get even
*more* than eight.
Tom Rauschenbach
>(Sorry if this one has been posted before). I heard this story from someone
>who worked for a French company, they had a problem with a program
Sorry Roger but your memory is faulty, you heard this story from me, and
the company involved was American, with a French customer. This a great
example of FOAFism since I told you, I heard it from Hal, and Hal got it
from the corporate culture at the shop he worked for. (Ask me about
black pepper in the ladies room sometime !) The story is true.
BTW: Yesterday someone at the school where my wife works posted a notice
asking for pull tab rings so someone could get free dialysis !!
--
Tom Rauschenbach "I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be
able to see Nobody ! And at that distance too !" ..uunet!merk!uvmark!tom
David Olsen
university computer lab that contained both SPARC Stations and Macintoshes.
I was working on a SPARC Station. Some non-computer type came into the lab
wanting to use a Macintosh (which he knew how to use). There weren't
any Macs available, so the lab monitor told him to use a SPARC Station,
claiming they were essentially the same thing. The guy sat down at
the SPARC Station, stuck in his disk (the SPARC Stations there had 3 1/2
inch drives), and stared dumbfounded at the login screen for a few
minutes not having any idea what to do. I had to get his disk out for
him by logging in to the machine and running the eject program, then I
sent him back to the lab monitor to demand a Macintosh.
--
David Olsen University of Wisconsin - Madison
d...@cs.wisc.edu Department of Computer Science
#include <disclaimer.h>
Jacob R. Deglopper
In a previous article, wal...@aimla.com (Walter Hunt) says:
>
>
> Then there's a former supervisor who sat down to use a Mac in the
>office. Put his floppy in. Didn't mount. Put another floppy in. Same problem.
>Tried three or four times before asking for some help.
>
> You guessed it. No floppy drive. All the floppies were just falling into
>the Mac, where they had to be retrieved later by the guy the supervisor called.
>
> They taped up the hole.
When we got a hard drive for out first Mac II at school four or so years ago,
we had the same problem. Tape solved it for us too. Seems no one thought
to include a hole cover, and it looked just like a drive...
--
_/acob DeGlopper, EMT-A, Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad
jr...@po.cwru.edu -- Biomedical Engineering '95, Case Western Reserve
Opinions my own...
"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit." -- Virgil
D John McKenna
> Then there's a former supervisor who sat down to use a Mac in the
>office. Put his floppy in. Didn't mount. Put another floppy in. Same problem.
>Tried three or four times before asking for some help.
> You guessed it. No floppy drive. All the floppies were just falling into
>the Mac, where they had to be retrieved later by the guy the supervisor called.
You don't even need to be missing a floppy drive with the Mac Classic.
Just insert a disk, then insert another one. It goes half way in. The
machine must be opened (voiding warranty) to get it out. Congratulations
Apple. I've seen this happen no fewer than 3 times.
John West
Existentialist Man
I used to be an aide for a community college class that attempted to
teach Wordperfect to (mostly) to generic community people. The machines
being used were Apple //e's with dual floppies and (gaaah!) CP/M cards...
So, one evening, as I wandered around the lab, one elderly woman called
me over to her machine, where, she complained, the machine wouldn't
work. The drives were making this funny noise as the disk spun. Looking
in the slot, I saw that not only had she put two disks into the slot,
but she had put them in backwards...
Also, a friend of mine used to carry 3.5" disks around in his backpack,
with a bunch of books. Often, the metal shutters would get bent.
One day, he popped it into the trusty old Mac Plus, and was a bit
disturbed when, later, it wouldn't eject. So, he tried pulling it.
The shutter popped off, leaving him with a shutterless disk and
a jammed drive. And that was fun getting out of there, I can tell you...
--
Biting insects and the way they sting
These are a few of my favorite things PTP
- mu...@wpi.wpi.edu Joshua Brandt -
Don Nichols (DoN.)
>
>one of the labs used for computer literacy, and worked at night when all
>of the middle-aged businesspeople who had never seen a computer decided
>to take a stupid dos course in hopes of raising their salaries exponentially.
>
>Well, I can pull disk stories out of the woodwork for hours...lemme think
>of a couple...
>
Well, a co-worker (ex - thank goodness), was using the division
director's IBM-PC. Remember the full-height floppy drives with the style of
door which was started by Shugart? - You pulled out on the bottom while
pushing in with your thumb at the top, or sometimes just pulled out at the
bottom?) Well, he put his finger *way* in, bent it upwards, and pulled. He
broke the door right off its hinges. Then he came to me because it wouldn't
read his floppy. (He'd sort of pushed the parts back into aproximately
where they belonged. Wouldn't admit to doing anything to the drive.)
Same fellow came to me with problems recovering his word-processor
file from his floppy. (Microsoft word) Well, it turned out that the floppy
had never been formatted. He never noticed the little message about the
failure of the write when he tried to save. I *think* that he might have
noticed if Word had blanked the screen, put the word "FAIL" in inverse-video
built-up characters, set it to blinking between green and red, while the
screen blinked form yellow to green, and played a siren sound from the
speaker. (Unfortunately, he probably wouldn't have noticed. :-)
This man is one who *should* have had, at least, a better feel for
the mechanics of the drive, if nothing else. He was an experimental
physicist, so a non-tech background is not a valid defense. He was just
good at destroying what he used.
--
Donald Nichols (DoN.) | Voice (Days): (703) 664-1585 (Eves): (703) 938-4564
D&D Data | Email: <dnic...@ceilidh.beartrack.com>
I said it - no one else | <dnic...@ceilidh.aes.com>
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
Dan Sorenson -- Seed Testing Labortory
All these floppy-destroying and drive-destroying stories made
me remember a not-so-funny incident of my own. One Christmas vacation
I brought the Apple IIgs home and did a little game-playing. My kid
sister (age 7 at the time) put a 3.5" floppy in my 5.25" drive. Really
wedged the thing in there good, too! I couldn't for the life of me
figure out why my floppy wouldn't insert all the way. A flashlight
illuminated the problem (har!), and a hemostat pulled it out. I'm
just thankful the drive heads weren't scratched or the mechanism
tweaked out of alignment. I also installed a lock that same day.
< z1...@exnet.iastate.edu Dan Sorenson vik...@iastate.edu >
< "Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world >
< in jeopardy." -- John Dewey standard disclaimers apply >
Jill Lundquist
>Ask me about black pepper in the ladies room sometime !)
So, Tom, how 'bout that black pepper in the ladies room?
Jill Lundquist lund...@spot.colorado.edu DoD #882
"I type my .sig by hand every time."
Dave Huang
>On a related note, the MicroLab I work in has a weekly problem with our
>Mac SE's. Some user will fail to notice that there's already a boot disk
>in one of the two floppy drives, and manage to stuff their disk in there
>with it. Sigh... Once a week. Not kidding.
This is/was a problem at the Mac lab over here too... the boot disks
used to have "Only one disk per drive, please" written on the edge (or
something to that effect :-) We've now switched to that memory and
disk space hog, System 7... the system file itself is over 2 megs
long, so there's no hope of fitting that on a floppy...
>TTFN/TTYL... Joshua B-)
>| jsb...@acs.ucalgary.ca Internet Academic Computing Services |
>| be...@cpsc.ucalgary.ca (alternate) University of Calgary, Canada |
--
David Huang |
Internet: da...@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | "Microwaves: They're not just
UUCP: ...!ut-emx!ccwf.cc.utexas.edu!daveh | for cooking anymore."
America Online: DrWho29 |
Eugene Girard
A computer salesman at a local store (I think it was a radio shack, but
who knows) was helping a customer who couldn't get a program to install on
his new PC. Eventually, the techie asked the user to repeat everything
he had done when the failure occurred (since he wasn't able to reproduce the
error...)
The user sits down at the machine, puts in the system disk, and types
'install'. The program starts copying to the hard drive, then asks the
user to insert disk 2 in drive A:. The user plops in the second disk.
The user plops in the third disk. By the time the program was asking for
the fifth disk, the user is having a hard time cramming them into the
little slot, and the techie is trying to maintain his composure.
Maybe "Please remove the disk in drive A:, and insert disk 2" would be
more exact?
--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Gene Girard (gir...@qucis.QueensU.CA)
-----------------------------------------------------------
Life...
>You don't even need to be missing a floppy drive with the Mac Classic.
>Just insert a disk, then insert another one. It goes half way in. The
>machine must be opened (voiding warranty) to get it out. Congratulations
>Apple. I've seen this happen no fewer than 3 times.
A FOAF has a 3.5" drive where the eject mechanics are just a tad too
powerful. It became standard procedure to, when the disk was to be
ejected, to stand to the side of the computer and let the disk shoot
into the chair.
One day, when the father was working in the garage, his kid (unknown
age) was at the computer, and ejected a disk like a normal person would.
Hit the button and put his hand out ready to grab the disk's partial
ejection to then pull it the rest of the way out, thumb on top. Imagine
his surprise when the disk came out and broke his thumb!
The father, hearing the kid's scream out to the garage, yelled back, "I
told you not to touch my machine!"
I don't think it was a Mac, but if it was, I'd suggest the guy replace
the sound in MacPuke with a gunshot sound.
>John West
The Unknown User
In article <1991Oct10.0...@ceilidh.beartrack.com> dnic...@ceilidh.beartrack.com (Don Nichols (DoN.)) writes:
>Remember the full-height floppy drives with the style of
>door which was started by Shugart? - You pulled out on the bottom while
>pushing in with your thumb at the top, or sometimes just pulled out at the
>bottom?)
Waaaait a second here..
Did the Shugart drives come before the Disk ][ drives (used on the
Apple II, and some of the most unbreakable stuff this side of Tonka trucks
and HP calculators)?
Or did Shugart MAKE the Disk ][ drives??
Basically, since you were talking about the IBM PC, it sounded
like the Shugart drives (which started that door type according to you)
might have been after the Disk ][s.
It'll probably end up that Shugart made the Disk ][s.. ohwell.
--
/ unk...@ucscb.ucsc.edu Apple IIGS Forever! \
\WANT to help get ULTIMA VI //e or GS written?-mail me. CHEAP CD info-mail me./
Klaus Ole Kristiansen
gu...@uniwa.uwa.oz.au (D John McKenna) writes:
>You don't even need to be missing a floppy drive with the Mac Classic.
>Just insert a disk, then insert another one. It goes half way in. The
>machine must be opened (voiding warranty) to get it out. Congratulations
>Apple. I've seen this happen no fewer than 3 times.
When I did that (NEVER put a black label on a black disk!), I managed
to get the disk out without opening the machine. I even got the shutter
out, though that took a little more work.
Klaus O K
Andrew Holyer
Way back in the mists of time, I had a job for a company which
produced business applications in machine code on Commodore PET's (no
smileys *whatsoever* I'm afraid :-(). The PETs were equipped with the
old Commodore double floppys. This was a large box containing a 6502
board and two 40K floppy drives (ah! nostalgia!). The drive's CPu
talked a high-level protocol with the computer, and ran the drives
autonomously. Made file handling pretty easy. However, one feature of
the firmware was that whenever they received a reset signal from the
Computer, they scanned the heads one complete cycle over the disks in
case the heads had got out of alignment. The Drive I used (being
junior) consisted of bits of the first five in Europe stuck together
so that they went. Unfortunatley, my drive did not have the firmware
fix to make sure that the erase head was lifted up before parking the
heads :-). Result: leave an application: wipe your disk. reset your
machine: wipe your disk. turn your machine off: wipe your disk.
Remember that all we had to work on in those days were floppies. A
mode of extreme paranoia was the only succesful way to operate with
those drives around; combined with frequent backups, you could
generally avoid trashing all you work in proress more than once a
week....
--
&ndy Holyer, School of Cognitive and | "An alcoholic is a man you don't
Computing Studies, University of Sussex, | like who drinks as much as you
JANET: an...@cogs.sussex.ac.uk | do" --- Dylan Thomas
Don Nichols (DoN.)
>
>In article <1991Oct10.0...@ceilidh.beartrack.com> dnic...@ceilidh.beartrack.com (Don Nichols (DoN.)) writes:
>>Remember the full-height floppy drives with the style of
>>door which was started by Shugart? - You pulled out on the bottom while
>>pushing in with your thumb at the top, or sometimes just pulled out at the
>>bottom?)
>
> Waaaait a second here..
>
> Did the Shugart drives come before the Disk ][ drives (used on the
>Apple II, and some of the most unbreakable stuff this side of Tonka trucks
>and HP calculators)?
Shugart was selling 5.15" drives well before Apple had disk drives
at all.
> Or did Shugart MAKE the Disk ][ drives??
I think that some of the early Apple drives were Shugart SA-400
drives without the standard logic board (and possibly with some other logic
board, but I've never used Apples, I just remember that their
floppy-to-controller interface was as wierd as Commodore PET's version of
ASCII.
> Basically, since you were talking about the IBM PC, it sounded
>like the Shugart drives (which started that door type according to you)
>might have been after the Disk ][s.
I owned several of the Shugart SA-400 drives *long* before the IBM
PC made its way into the world. It was just on an IBM PC that this incident
occured. The drive was *not* made by Shugart, but by whoever was the
contract supplier for IBM at the time. I mentioned the Shugart to indicate
the style of door mechanism, since the Shugart was the first one in my
experience to use that type of mechanism, and I wanted to distinguish it
from the later drives with the twist-lever (which would be hard to damage
that way), and the earlier drives which I had seen which used a full-size
door (I think made by Wangtek) which I remember on a Chromenco S-100 based
system.
I *believe* that Shugart was the first to make the 5.25" format
drive, but can't be sure of that. I *think* that it was in 1976 that I got
my first drive. At that time, the first Apple I's were being advertised,
and Northgate had come out with a floppy controller for the little beasts
(to use on S-100 systems, which I didn't have.) I was in the process of
determining that the Altair 680b was made with too slow a clock (500 KHz) to
allow a tight-enough loop to read or write data. A little later, SSB
(Smoke Signal Broadcasting) came out with a controller board for the SWTP
6800, and I spotted someone selling a partially-completed kit because he was
moving back home from college (via motorcycle). I got that (and was
thankful that the only part that he'd nearly completed was the video
terminal kit - since I already had a good crt terminal for the times). The
workmanship on what had been completed was abominable. That got me into
floppy usage. I later moved to the 8" to get more space, since I was trying
to maintain a mailing-list on the floppys, and it kept outgrowing my disk
space. At the peak, I was running four 5.25" and four 8" drives.
Dagwood splits the Atom
>In article <22...@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unk...@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes:
>> Did the Shugart drives come before the Disk ][ drives (used on the
>>Apple II, and some of the most unbreakable stuff this side of Tonka trucks
>>and HP calculators)?
>
> Shugart was selling 5.15" drives well before Apple had disk drives
>at all.
>
>> Or did Shugart MAKE the Disk ][ drives??
Well, mine had Shugart mechanisms. Either SA-400's, or a 35-track variant
(SA-350?). Remember the short-lived 70/80 track battle when 3.5" drives
came out?
>> Basically, since you were talking about the IBM PC, it sounded
>>like the Shugart drives (which started that door type according to you)
>>might have been after the Disk ][s.
The PC drives far antedate the Disk ][; the machine itself was introduced
in late 1981, with Tandon as the sole floppy drive supplier for the first
few years. And what drives they were! (gag, cough)
For whatever it's worth, I don't remember anybody else making the centered
flip-up style doors before Shugart. It seems to me that 8" drives were
nearly universal in using the slide-shut door with release button, even on
IBM word processing equipment of the mid-to-late '70s.
-dave
--
David Hsu h...@eng.umd.edu "There you stand like a duck in a
U of Md Systems Research Ctr thunderstorm again - aren't you ever
College Park, Md 20742-3311 going to understand?"
+1 301 405 3689 - W. A. Mozart
Bruce M. Walker
> >Remember the full-height floppy drives with the style of
> >door which was started by Shugart? - You pulled out on the bottom while
> >pushing in with your thumb at the top, or sometimes just pulled out at the
> >bottom?)
>
> Waaaait a second here..
Yes, Shugart made the very first 5.25" floppy drives, the SA400 around
1976-77. That drive, minus most of its electronics, (would have been a
custom order with Shugart) was what Apple used for their early fruit.
These drives were 35 tracks, single-sided and could be aligned for
either hard sectored or soft sectored diskettes. Most controllers
handled single-density (FM) data, but Apple got "clever" and wrote
data using a group-code (GCR), a concept swiped from tape controllers
of the time, to get about 50% more data per track.
They outclevered themselves though, because had they been paying
attention, they could have easily implemented MFM and got 100% more
data for no more electronics (and a lot less screwing around in s/w).
--
"CAUTION: OBJECTS IN SCREEN ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR"
b...@isgtec.uucp [ ..uunet!utai!lsuc!isgtec!bmw ] Bruce Walker
Don Nichols (DoN.)
>In article <1991Oct14.2...@ceilidh.beartrack.com> dnic...@ceilidh.beartrack.com (Don Nichols (DoN.)) writes:
>>In article <22...@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unk...@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes:
>>> Did the Shugart drives come before the Disk ][ drives (used on the
>>>Apple II, and some of the most unbreakable stuff this side of Tonka trucks
>>>and HP calculators)?
>>
>> Shugart was selling 5.15" drives well before Apple had disk drives
>>at all.
Actually 5.25" drives - serves me right for trying to read/answer
news at the hour I was doing it.
>>
>>> Or did Shugart MAKE the Disk ][ drives??
>
>Well, mine had Shugart mechanisms. Either SA-400's, or a 35-track variant
>(SA-350?). Remember the short-lived 70/80 track battle when 3.5" drives
>came out?
I don't think that there was any change in model number (or maybe a
suffix) when they went from 35-track to 40-track. The 50 in place of 00
indicates a double-sided drive, but the 3 in your guess makes it a strange
size floppy (4.333" ? :-).
[ ... ]
>The PC drives far antedate the Disk ][; the machine itself was introduced
>in late 1981, with Tandon as the sole floppy drive supplier for the first
>few years. And what drives they were! (gag, cough)
Yep! It was one of those Tandon drives that the user at work ripped
the door off while trying to open it.
>For whatever it's worth, I don't remember anybody else making the centered
>flip-up style doors before Shugart. It seems to me that 8" drives were
>nearly universal in using the slide-shut door with release button, even on
>IBM word processing equipment of the mid-to-late '70s.
Well, on the 8" line, I have at work, in a box, a 8" drive removed
from an IBM box (terminal cluster controller?) which uses the twist-lever
door control, like later 5.25" floppys. (It is probably going to turn-in
soon, since it was removed from the controller when it started plowing the
oxde off the floppy it worked from, and we have a property survey coming up
soon. :-)