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The Exatron Stringy Floppy (or ESF) is a continuous-loop tape drive developed by Exatron.
History
editThe company introduced an S-100 stringy floppy drive at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, and a version for the Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1979. Exatron sold about 4,000 TRS-80 drives by August 1981 for $249.50 each, stating that it was "our best seller by far". The tape cartridge is about the size of a business card, but about 3⁄16 inch (4.8 mm) thick.[1] The magnetic tape inside the cartridge is 1⁄16 inch (1.6 mm) wide.
Format
editThere is no single catalog of files; to load a specific file the drive searches the entire tape, briefly stopping to read the header of each found file. The tape loop only moves in one direction, so a file that starts behind the current ___location cannot be read until the drive searches the entire loop for it. The device is capable of reading and writing random access data files (unlike a datacassette). If a record being sought has been overshot, the drive advances the tape until it loops around to the beginning and continues seeking from there.[2]
According to Embedded Systems magazine, the Exatron Stringy Floppy uses Manchester encoding, achieving 14K read-write speeds and the code controlling the device was developed by Li-Chen Wang, who also wrote a Tiny BASIC, the basis for the TRS-80 Model I Level I BASIC.
Reception
editIn the July 1983 issue of Compute!'s Gazette, the Exatron Stringy Floppy for the VIC-20 and the Commodore 64 was reviewed. Calling the peripheral "a viable alternative" to tape or disk, the magazine noted that "under ideal conditions, a Stringy Floppy can outperform a VIC-1540/1541 disk drive". Texas Instruments licensed the Stringy Floppy as the Waferdrive for its cancelled TI 99/2 computer and a Compact Computer 40 peripheral which never shipped.[3][2]
Use and distribution
editThe Exatron drive was initially used in the Prophet-10 music synthesizer and was later replaced with a micro-cassette drive from Braemar, reportedly due to unreliability and poor mutual compatibility of the former.[4]
Cartridges, or "wafers", were available in tape lengths ranging from 5 to 75 feet (1.5 to 22.9 m).[1] Known data capacities/tape length are: 4 kB/5 feet, 16 kB/20 feet, 48 kB/50 feet, and 64 kB/75 feet.[5] One complete cycle through a 20-foot (6.1 m) tape takes 55 to 65 seconds, depending on the number of files it contains.[2]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ a b Barry, John (1981-08-31). "Stringy Floppy from Exatron". InfoWorld. pp. 47–48. Retrieved 15 February 2015.
- ^ a b c Halfhill, Tom R. (July 1983). "Exatron Stringy Floppy for VIC-20 and 64". Compute!'s Gazette. pp. 58–62. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
- ^ Mace, Scott (1983-05-30). "Texas Instruments in the Saddle". InfoWorld. pp. 26–28. Retrieved 2024-12-29.
- ^ Reid, Gordon (March 1999). "Sequential Circuits – Prophet Synthesizers 5 & 10 (Retro)". Sound on Sound. Archived from the original on 3 February 2016. Retrieved January 23, 2015.
- ^ Reed, Matthew. "The Exatron Stringy Floppy". Retrieved 23 March 2014.