place your bets

[Fred Cisin]

> > Are there ANY 30 year old computer companies that didn't? [use 8"]
> > (not counting "consumer electronics" companies :)

On Sat, 3 Mar 2007, Ethan Dicks wrote:
> Apple?
On Sat, 3 Mar 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> How about Apple?  While I believe one could buy a third-party 8"
> adapter, the company itself didn't offer an 8" drive option, did
> they?  The SA-400 was about 1976, IIRC.

Apple formally announced that they are NO LONGER "a computer company",
that they are now a "consumer electronics" company.

Yes, Sorrento Valley Associates, and at least one other company, offered a
third party 8" disk controller for the ][.


Unconfirmed statement: "The earliest prototypes for the AT that Microsoft
received had 8" drives, because the 5.25" 1.2M ones weren't ready yet."

Even less credible: "The earliest prototypes of the Lisa used 8" drives
and diskettes, because the twiggys weren't ready yet."
The only pre-release Lisa that I saw already had 5.25" floppy drive, an
external hard drive, and an almost working Smalltalk compiler.

The earliest 1.2M 5.25" drives that I saw had a 50 pin card edge,
instead of 34 pin, and were intended as a plug-in substitute for 8"


On Sat, 3 Mar 2007, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> Now, that's a trick question, Fred!  How many computer companies that
> were around in 1977 are still around today?

VERY few, and getting fewer.
I've been approached by an outfit that wants me to sell them my
xenosoft.com domain name.

--
Grumpy Ol' Fred     		cisin at xenosoft.com