What the heck is this?

[Tony Jay]

This was in with Atari 8 bit stuff from a moving sale. I did not take it with the Atari 8 bit stuff that I bought but did take a picture. It is not Atari, but there are no markings and no information. It is a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive. Interestingly it seems you had to manually set whether you were reading or writing to the disk. I do not have in front of me, so I can't take it apart to see if there were any identification markings internally. I would be curious what this is before it goes to e waste.

Edited October 31, 2022 by Tony Jay
addtional info

[Video]

The drive door looks standard for the era. Maybe somebody built their own from parts bitd? If you ever get a hold of it again, the cable hookups may provide a clue what its for.

 

Or maybe its a more commercial drive for mass writing discs?

 

Kind of reminds me of old server bay components.

Edited November 5, 2022 by Video

[+x=usr(1536)]

23 minutes ago, Video said:

The drive door looks standard for the era.

Taking a wild guess, I'm going to say that it's an Apple Disk II-compatible device, at least as far as the drive itself goes.  As for what it was actually connected to, I have no idea.

 

The Receive/Record and Send/Play switches have me wondering if this wasn't intended for use with a synthesiser, sampler, or similar.  The terminology fits, at least.

[Turbo-Torch]

It's a Shugart SA-400 drive and most likely predates anything TRS-80, PET or Apple by a year.  Stores about 80K formatted.  Depending on what the model # ends in, it may require hard-sector floppies.

 

Don't know what it goes to, but it would be a damn shame to send that to an e-waste facility.

At least offer it up on vcfed.org where it'll go to a good home.

 

[Tony Jay]

6 hours ago, Turbo-Torch said:

It's a Shugart SA-400 drive and most likely predates anything TRS-80, PET or Apple by a year.  Stores about 80K formatted.  Depending on what the model # ends in, it may require hard-sector floppies.

 

Don't know what it goes to, but it would be a damn shame to send that to an e-waste facility.

At least offer it up on vcfed.org where it'll go to a good home.

 

Thank you. I knew someone in these forums would know. I will ask the owner to hold on to it, and next time I am in his city I will pick up and then try to find a home for it.

[stushug]

Here's a link to some info on the drive, with pictures.

https://www.si.edu/object/microcomputer-peripheral-shugart-sa400-disk-drive:nmah_334325

[Tony Jay]

11 hours ago, stushug said:

Here's a link to some info on the drive, with pictures.

https://www.si.edu/object/microcomputer-peripheral-shugart-sa400-disk-drive:nmah_334325

I asked the owner (lives 2 hours away from me) take a picture of any markings that might help to identify it. He sent this. This looks to be a Shugart drive internally but in an enclosure made by Techtran Industries, for which I could not find anything online. Interesting piece of old tech but we may not find out what people were using it for. Thanks all.

[+MrZarniwoop]

Search for "Techtran micro-discs", they were devices that replaced paper tape, punch cards, or tapes storing instead to floppy disks. They also made cassette versions called "datacassette".

 

EDIT *** I saw one of these in my childhood on a commercial embroidery machine that I was told converted from paper tape.

[Turbo-Torch]

A quick search shows they were a somewhat big company from 1971 to 1985.  

They definitely have some history in the business area of computing.

 

Here's a magazine ad...

 

 

[Turbo-Torch]

With the play and record buttons, I'm thinking it may have started off life as one of their datacassette systems and got upgraded to the floppy years later.  It would be interesting to see if those buttons and switches are still attached to anything inside the case.

 

If anything, it's an ominous looking external drive case with built in power supply and fan.  If I came across something like that, I'd put the Shugart in a safe place and install a common full height Tandon (which looks identical) and place it next to the other external drive on my Model III.

 

[Ecernosoft]

On 10/31/2022 at 10:23 AM, Tony Jay said:

This was in with Atari 8 bit stuff from a moving sale. I did not take it with the Atari 8 bit stuff that I bought but did take a picture. It is not Atari, but there are no markings and no information. It is a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive. Interestingly it seems you had to manually set whether you were reading or writing to the disk. I do not have in front of me, so I can't take it apart to see if there were any identification markings internally. I would be curious what this is before it goes to e waste.

Answer: The floppy drive from Hell.....

[Tony Jay]

6 hours ago, Turbo-Torch said:

With the play and record buttons, I'm thinking it may have started off life as one of their datacassette systems and got upgraded to the floppy years later.  It would be interesting to see if those buttons and switches are still attached to anything inside the case.

 

If anything, it's an ominous looking external drive case with built in power supply and fan.  If I came across something like that, I'd put the Shugart in a safe place and install a common full height Tandon (which looks identical) and place it next to the other external drive on my Model III.

 

I will definitely try to get my hands on it as otherwise it is destined for e-waste, and if I do, I will do some forensic photography that I can share.

[Tony Jay]

6 hours ago, Turbo-Torch said:

A quick search shows they were a somewhat big company from 1971 to 1985.  

They definitely have some history in the business area of computing.

 

Here's a magazine ad...

 

 

I saw an news article about this company 'trying to turn things around' in 1982 but it was behind a paywall. I guess it did not work well out for them.. I suspect that their problem was like Atari's, in which they had advanced technology and products, but made bad decisions on the business side. Like for Atari, not opening up support for developers like Apple did in its early days. Just my speculation.

[Tony Jay]

7 hours ago, MrZarniwoop said:

Search for "Techtran micro-discs", they were devices that replaced paper tape, punch cards, or tapes storing instead to floppy disks. They also made cassette versions called "datacassette".

 

EDIT *** I saw one of these in my childhood on a commercial embroidery machine that I was told converted from paper tape.

Used that for search and found this. I think this is close model and is indeed a 'micro-disc' by this company which is now defunct. Great forum detectives here! Thank you.

[Keatah]

MTI Systems Corp and Disc/3 were main distributors and integrators for Techtran products. Techtran is short for Technology Transfer.

 

MDM-80's are not converted cassette drives. Nor has it been converted by a hobbyist. It would have taken an impractical amount of effort, essentially a complete re-design except maybe for the power supply, to go from cassette to disk. Techtran's tape drives were much bigger anyways.

 

Note the main card at the top and two connectors at the back are missing. This drive would be inserted between the terminal/cpu and modem. Inline if you will. Daisychain style. And the drive would latch data as it came in and write when its buffer filled. A small buffer mind you. That's why you set set stop, parity, baud.

Edited November 17, 2022 by Keatah

[Tony Jay]

21 hours ago, Keatah said:

MTI Systems Corp and Disc/3 were main distributors and integrators for Techtran products. Techtran is short for Technology Transfer.

 

MDM-80's are not converted cassette drives. Nor has it been converted by a hobbyist. It would have taken an impractical amount of effort, essentially a complete re-design except maybe for the power supply, to go from cassette to disk. Techtran's tape drives were much bigger anyways.

 

Note the main card at the top and two connectors at the back are missing. This drive would be inserted between the terminal/cpu and modem. Inline if you will. Daisychain style. And the drive would latch data as it came in and write when its buffer filled. A small buffer mind you. That's why you set set stop, parity, baud.

Very interesting. Collective knowledge in this forum is amazing. Techtran seemed to be a pretty big company in the 80s and then went out of business. Not sure why really apart from speculating on the rapidly growing competition. This was with the Atari devices I acquired, that was used in one small engineering company. Owner told me he bought Atari for its low cost. I can't see how this Techtran drive would have been used or even attached to 8 bit Atari computers, and he did have several 810 drives. Thank you for the info.

[Keatah]

You're welcome.

 

I will guess and assume that there was a custom interface made to connect the Shugart drive sitting in that metal enclosure to Atari somehow. Assuming it was successfully used with Atari 8-bit rigs in the first place.

 

I have a pile of Tandon mechanisms in my Apple II stash. Should I ever whittle down my A2 stuff, and these drives are given away with it, someone else would wonder how I had those hooked to the Apple.. Just guessing..

 

Anyhow some of this stuff exhibits nice period style. Got a soft spot for peripherals like that. It's like the Corvus drives. Absolutely love the 70's datacenter look they exude. And it was one of my first exposures to hard disks when I was in school eons ago. So.. Someday I'd like to gut one (of the two I have) and make it into a modern NAS. Of course taking care to be sure it could be put back to originality because it still works.