dennisg@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Dennis Griesser) (02/25/86)
In article <69600004@uiucdcsb> liberte@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU writes: >Looking inside the Mac, the hole at the front of the case where you >stick your disks in the drive has the vestigial markings of a 5 1/4" >size drive. Anyone know the story, if there is one? The Macintosh was originally designed to use the same drives as Lisa. These were called "Twiggy" drives. They used 5 1/4-inch diskettes with an extra head-access slot in them. The Twiggy drives themselves were double-sided, but NOT in the traditional sense. Instead of a head on each side with the diskette clamped in between, Twiggy had the heads 180-degrees apart around the diskette. This let them use soft backing pads to press the diskette against the heads. The whole idea was to reduce head and media wear. Some folks considered them elegant, some a kludge. There were many complaints about reliability. The diskettes were probably hard to find, too. Rumor has it that Apple had trouble getting enough of the drives to crank out zillions of Macs, so they switched to the 3 1/2-inch ones. They later offered a kit to retrofit Lisas with Mac-style diskettes. Another noble experiment down the drain. -- [Standard disclaimers apply.]