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Trying to remember name of a floppy "bank"

deathshadow

deathshadow

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Back in the day running LDOS 5.1.4 on my Model III I used to have a device that was basically three 80 track 5.25" floppy drives in a single full height bay. What made it unique was it only had one floppy connector on the back and shared the bay door and drive spindle for all three... To the system it looked like a 240 track drive giving a capacity of about 2 megabytes.

Was fun to watch with the case off as internally it used the track step indicator to switch between which disk was in use dividing the track count by three.

For the life of me I can't remember what it was called. I was thinking something like that might be handy for a lot of old retrocomputers where there is no easy way to add a hard drive interface... just give it a pretend 240 track floppy. Could even work on a tandy or PCjr, you just set up the disk with driveparm.

Does anyone else remember a device like that? What brought it to mind was a buddy of mine is trying to fix a corrupted server at work, only to find out his predecessor set it up in RAID 3. Lose one disk... you're pretty well shtupped.
 
deathshadow said:
Back in the day running LDOS 5.1.4 on my Model III I used to have a device that was basically three 80 track 5.25" floppy drives in a single full height bay. What made it unique was it only had one floppy connector on the back and shared the bay door and drive spindle for all three... To the system it looked like a 240 track drive giving a capacity of about 2 megabytes.

Was fun to watch with the case off as internally it used the track step indicator to switch between which disk was in use dividing the track count by three.

For the life of me I can't remember what it was called. I was thinking something like that might be handy for a lot of old retrocomputers where there is no easy way to add a hard drive interface... just give it a pretend 240 track floppy. Could even work on a tandy or PCjr, you just set up the disk with driveparm.

Does anyone else remember a device like that? What brought it to mind was a buddy of mine is trying to fix a corrupted server at work, only to find out his predecessor set it up in RAID 3. Lose one disk... you're pretty well shtupped.
Click to expand...
The Model II optionally used a 3-bay 8 inch drive setup. That would would give you a total of four 8 inch drives. Don't remember the exact nomenclature for that setup, but Shugart comes to mind. You might want to vistit the old Tandy sites and check it out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shugart_Associates
 
Ira Goldklang would probably know.

The only multiple-floppy-per-spindle drives that come to mind are the PerSci 8" models 27x and 29x. But those used only 2 diskettes per spindle.

There was another outfit that offered a magazine drive with several floppies (nonstandard) per cartridge that could optionally be addressed as a single floppy. It was sold for Tandy and Apple, but I don't think that's what you're thinking of either.
 
I have the 3 disk expansion unit for the TRS-80 Model 2. I was told they were Shugarts. All I know is, they're damn heavy!! :)
 
I remember that from having a model 2, but the item I'm thinking of fit into a single full height drive bay -- NOT three separate drives side-by-side. Much like the 2/3rds height dual drive in my Sharp Luggable, only it accessed them as a single drive. The entire unit was no larger than a Apple Disk II or the standard external floppy for a Coco.

A buddy of mine who used to work at 80 Micro (I live just over the hill from Peterborough) says he remembers it, and thinks it was called a "Flopstore".
 
deathshadow said:
I remember that from having a model 2, but the item I'm thinking of fit into a single full height drive bay -- NOT three separate drives side-by-side. Much like the 2/3rds height dual drive in my Sharp Luggable, only it accessed them as a single drive. The entire unit was no larger than a Apple Disk II or the standard external floppy for a Coco.

A buddy of mine who used to work at 80 Micro (I live just over the hill from Peterborough) says he remembers it, and thinks it was called a "Flopstore".
Click to expand...
Question: Are we still talking about a 8" floppy drive. The Model II itself has a single full height 8" floppy.
 
Agent Orange said:
Question: Are we still talking about a 8" floppy drive. The Model II itself has a single full height 8" floppy.
Click to expand...

I was NEVER referring to a 8" floppy in the first place -- see my original post? 5.25" fits in a SINGLE full height bay! Model IIII. Single floppy connector, pretended to be a single drive, mounted three floppies at once sharing a single drive motor.
 
There was a 5.25" magazine-loading drive that could make several floppies look like a single large one (by automatically shuffling them in and out of the drive) that was available for both Apple II and the TRS-80. But that's not what you're talking about.

As a matter of fact, I can't even get my head around how a single shaft could service three floppies--how would you insert a disk into the middle one?

But as I said, if it was Tandy-related, Ira Goldklang would know. Have you dropped a note to him? He does answer his email.
 
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