Amlyn Minipac diskette changer

[Chuck Guzis]

On 19 Jul 2010 at 8:00, Steven Hirsch wrote:

> The new disk loads properly without mechanical issues, but will not
> format or otherwise show signs of life.  I'm guessing they wanted to
> preserve a market for blank diskettes and cartridges.  Reminds me of
> the DEC Rainbow (wasn't that system deliberately crippled to prevent
> it from being able to format blank media?).

If the Amlyn disks use an embedded servo, formatting one is a 
mechanical issue--you need to periodically offset from the central 
track axis a bit one way or the other to write a servo burst.  Not 
easy to do wth a conventional read/write drive.

--Chuck