On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:
> > > 3.9"
> > Who used them; who made them? Do you have a handy chart, Fred?
>
> IBM. They showed sample drives, made by Tabor?, and disks by Brown,
> before they finally went with 3.5". They showed them a LOT, and released
> some "engineering samples", but never seem to have put them into a
> production machine.
Interesting. Have you got a sample?
> The original 3.5" had no shutter. The ones that I have are labeled
> "Shugart".
I think I have one.
> The next ones had a completely manual shutter. YOU opened it, YOU closed
> it.
Wacky.
> Then came the "one way", or "pinch" shutter. You opened it manually, and
> to close it, you squeezed the corner of the disk. A few drives would open
> the disk for you, but you still needed to pinch the corner to release the
> shutter to close it. Some current disks still have the arrow that points
> to where you pinch it.
Ah. The first 3.5" disk I ever owned was an HP labeled disk with a pinch
shutter (I still have it somewhere).
> Then came the current style that opens AND closes it for you.
Technology marches on.
> The 3.25" is a much more interesting story (Dysan bet the company on it)
>
>
> At one time, the journalists were arguing about 3 v 3.25 v 3.5, as "shirt
> pocket disks". MOST of them got it wrong. George Morrow had the
> solution, "Let's just payoff the clothing business to make 5.25" shirt
> poskets."
> (Anybody got a copy of "Quotations from Chairman Morrow"?)
No, but I'd like a copy.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
* Old computing resources for business and academia at www.VintageTech.com *
Received on Wed Apr 16 2003 - 22:21:00 BST