thumb|String floppy cassette from the mid 1980s made by California Technology International

thumb|An Exatron Stringy Floppy (cover removed) designed for use with the TRS-80 Model 1

The Exatron Stringy Floppy (or ESF) was a continuous-loop tape drive developed by Exatron in 1978 for home computer users. The format was one of many attempts made by manufacturers to develop a new data cassette format that was smaller and more data dense than traditional data cassettes. The like other data tape formats, the ESF wafer system failed to catch on as a removable media due to a number of competing formats and inherent speed issue with tape storage, and was eventually abandoned as the cost of floppy disk storage dropped in the 1980s.

History

By the late 1970s computer hobbyists and manufacturers had begun to look for alternatives methods of data storage for home computers. The two main data storage formats for home use in 1978 were floppy disk or data cassette (repurposed audio cassette tapes and recorders). and the more rigid 3 1⁄2-inch version did not appear until 1983. Floppy disks offered quick read and write times, random-access , but there was a high cost of entry for drives. at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, and a "ESF-80" version for the Radio Shack TRS-80 in 1979. for Model 1000 wafers, and 11400 baud for Model 2000) than a traditional audio cassette recorder (250 - 500 baud), but did not provide random access. Data on tape needs to be accessed sequentially, that is, the tape must be wound to the appropriate position before data can be read or written.

Exatron sold about 4,000 ESF-80 drives by August 1981, at an MSRP of $249.50. Exatron eventually began to produce only their "Model 2000" tape, which moved at twice the speed of a Model 1000 mode. These formats were not compatible. In July 1983, the VIC-20 and C64 model (ESF-20/64) MSRP was $199.50.. The wafers used a photocell and indicator to designate the start of the tape loop. The wafers were almost the size of an American business card (about thick and wide).. Exatron hoped to develop Apple II and Commodore PET models

The 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.

See also

  • Data cassette
  • Rotronics Wafadrive
  • ZX Microdrive
  • Linear Tape-Open

Notes

References

  • Exatron Stringy Floppy as described by Bill Fletcher
  • Getting Files off Stringy Floppy Wafers for use in Emulators
  • Advertisements
  • Exatron Official Website