Wired covers VCF east

From: Frank McConnell <fmc_at_reanimators.org>
Date: Tue Jul 31 17:11:58 2001

Megan <mbg_at_world.std.com> wrote:
> As for the diskette being proprietary, I talked with someone at
> VCF-east and they said that they though that *really* early
> 3.5" diskettes were different from what we are used to now...
> he thought he might have a drive and some media... (if you
> are reading this, whoever, please contact me).

What little I could see in the picture looked sort of like a
Sony drive mechanism with the square eject button. True?

Early Sony 3.5" diskettes and drives had a manual diskette shutter.
You had to slide the shutter to the open position, and it would lock
open. Then you could insert the diskette. When you ejected the
diskette, you were expected to pinch it (that little arrow in the
upper left corner used to point to the word "PINCH") to release the
shutter; a spring would pull it closed.

Fred Cisin probably knows more about this than I do, I just remember
seeing some of the early HP stiffies that were usable this way so that
they would work in older stiffy drives. They weren't hard to find in
1984 or so, though then-current drives were "automatic".

-Frank McConnell
Received on Tue Jul 31 2001 - 17:11:58 BST