[Coco] Trouble with OmniFlop

[Gene Heskett]

Alex Evans wrote:
> 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.
> 
Sounds like a device that in the long run, fell by the wayside.  From 
what I think I know about IEEE-488, fitting that to a floppy as an 
interface would have been a bit of a surgical experiment?  Isn't this 
another name for GPIB?, whose signals are much higher powered than the 
usual TTL used for floppies.  Or am I confused about its genesis?

-- 
Cheers, Gene