"intelligent" disk drives

[Tim Shoppa]

Chuck wrote:
>Micropolis floppy drives were very well-made.  I wish that modern 
>drives could be as well-built.  All of mine are still operational.

I think that like CDC/Imprimis, Seagate, Shugart, etc., Micropolis
built drives to different price points for different markets.

The ones built for the mini and mainframe market in the late
80's/very early 90's are true tanks and stand up very solidly
here 15 or 20 years later.

But by the mid-late-90's when capacity was the craze I think that
some industrial-duty Micropolis drives were a little too bleeding
edge.

The MFM ones built for PC-clones, however, seem to simply be "above
average", which is pretty good but not stellar.

Tim.