[Coco] Trouble with OmniFlop

[Alex Evans]

On May 28, 2006, at 7:59 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:

> IMO, the design of a new motor with a coarser track spacing for a  
> floppy drive would be something that, generally speaking, would get  
> nixed by the bean counters, who would look at that expense, compare  
> it to buying a perfectly good std 135 tpi floppy from a Hong Kong  
> supplier for $1.43 USD each in 10k quantities and make the obvious  
> decision.  Such a thing might get by if the idea was to create a  
> totally incompatible disk such that all the games or other software  
> would have to be obtained from a single source, that maker.  And  
> thats been tried, and found wanting in every case I've heard of.   
> In eprom packaging for game machines that packaging for  
> incompatibility seems to work, but not in floppy's.

When this drive was made I doubt that stepper motors for 3.5" floppy  
drives were particularly common, standard inexpensive parts.  This  
beast from around the time of the introduction of 3.5" floppy drives  
and uses an HP-IB (IEEE-488) interface.