On Sat, 30 Aug 1997, Marvin wrote:
> A friend of mine just acquired a Kaypro Robie. Anyone know anything about
> this computer as far as how common it was? Also has anyone heard of
> Drivetec drives? Thanks.
The Robie was about the last variant of an 8-bit machine that Kaypro
built. The Housing was distinctly different from the previous 'luggable'
versions from the Kaycomp to the Kaypro 16. Because of its black finish
and shape, the Robie earned the nickname of "Darth Vader's Lunchbox". In
fact, even within the Robie line there were a couple of minro variants of
the drive 'blister' on top. There were relatively few built, though I
cannot provide any numerics.
The Drivetec drives were a bit of a marvel for the time. They were 5.25"
floppy drives that recorded at 192 tpi (tracks per inch) - twice that of
the present day 1.2 and 1.44mb drives. They had an unformatted capacity
of about 3.3mb (sorry, I cannot immediately lay my hands on the fact
sheet) and a formatted capacity of about 2.8mb. The media was rather
special in that it was factory formatted with servo tracks which a
vernier servo motor in the drive caused the heads to follow. It should
also be noted that some of the drives were known to be rather destructive
of the media.
Kodak (of camera and film fame) subsequently purchased the design from
Drivetec and went on to develop a 6.6mb (unformatted) version and, I
believe, another in the 10mb range. The designs and development
operation were ultimately sold to a Japanese company. Of my knowledge,
nothing further has been heard of the design, but one may hope that some
long term good has/will come out of the research and development.
- don
donm_at_cts.com
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Don Maslin - Keeper of the Dina-SIG CP/M System Disk Archives
Chairman, Dina-SIG of the San Diego Computer Society
Clinging tenaciously to the trailing edge of technology.
Sysop - Elephant's Graveyard (CP/M) - 619-454-8412
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see old system support at
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Received on Sun Aug 31 1997 - 00:26:25 BST