Orbis

[Chuck Guzis]

 On 9/23/2005,  jpero at sympatico.ca  wrote:

>Look for Epson 3.5" drives, they are plastic, have to remove the 
>metal sleeve to see this black plastic chassis, also the head sevro 
>is stepper with tiny, tiny fine toothed rack (thin bronze) & prinion 
>(also tiny dia).  Not suitable for heavy use.

It's actually pretty amazing, to see what lengths vendors would go to do cost-reduce components.  

Portable Smith Corona word processors used a 2.8" drive that worked the heads via a follower than ran in a spiral groove molded into a plastic disk that was driven by the spindle motor through a clutch.  Basically, pulsing the clutch caused the head to move in a continuous spiral pattern from the beginning of the diskette to the end.  Sort of a windshield-wiper auto-completion mechanism.  You could read or write the entire diskette (about 60K (MFM), if memory serves), but nothing less than that.  A gutless wonder if there ever was one.   It was actually pretty robust.

Cheers,
Chuck