6 Mar
2024
6 Mar
'24
11:18 p.m.
Chris Caudle <chris(a)chriscaudle.org> writes:
On Mar 6 2024, at 1:39 pm, David Kastrup
<dak(a)gnu.org> wrote:
Chris Caudle <chris(a)chriscaudle.org> writes:
Unlikely. It's this thing:
<https://reverb.com/item/77357892-liontracs-megafloppy-90-s-black>
and apparently it predates the Lion's Tracs brand (and arrangers): the
website megafloppy.com's first capture on archive.net already points to
the liontracs.com website which states that it supercedes the
megafloppy.com website and several others.
Interesting, that appears to be a floppy drive/HDD combination.
For devices which support floppy but not HDD that you wanted to upgrade?
Seems like a good guess, to handle that transition time when HDD had started
to become more common, but older devices did not have native ATA (or SCSI)
support yet.
It has connectors to the floppy controller of the MS40. It also has a
connector "floppy out" and a connector "SCSI" and it is hooked up to
the
MIDI IN. Apparently you can use the front panel controls to send some
files from floppy/floppies/harddisk to the MIDI IN and control the
copying of floppies to an internal harddisk (or a second floppy?) and
let that serve files.
Probably pointless to use this rather than an USB floppy drive emulator
(the stuff mapping an USB stick to 1000 floppy disks) these days, except
that it will also accept (and copy/handle/whatever) genuine floppy
disks. The raw connection to MIDI IN also is kind of weird since the
MS40 is pretty good at playing MIDI files (though it doesn't take remote
control commands from files).
I'd have been intrigued if there were a harddisk actually installed. As
it is, I doubt this will serve as more than an incredibly complex floppy
drive to me, so I'll likely swap it for a Gotek.
Somewhat impressive that something as complex as that was available in
floppy size factor (including a proper floppy drive) in the 1990s.
--
David Kastrup