[Coco] Exatron Stringy Floppy

[Arthur Flexser]

On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:

> These microdrives were amazingly durable little suckers, too ... the
> original microdrives that Exatron bought and modified were used on buoys in
> the ocean for data collection.
> 
> I don't think one was ever developed for the CoCo -- can't recall for sure
> -- probably because regular floppies became affordable.
> 
> Dennis
> 

I distinctly remember a version for the CoCo being advertised for a while
in Rainbow.  I remember thinking that one could probably get comparable
speed by modifying the CoCo's cassette functions so that they worked in
the double-speed CPU mode, which led to my first commercial product,
Fastape.  In that mode, cassette speed was 3600 bps, which actually was
faster than the floppy drive speed on a Commodore 64.  Though of course
the C-64 drive and (I think) the Exatron thingie had the advantage of
random access via a directory.

Art