On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:39:22 -0700, "William Sommerwerck"
wrote:
Incidentally, I designed, prototyped, but never produced a
paper tape printing pager in the early 1970's. The pager ran
on batteries, but the 1/4" paper tape transport and printing
was all wind-up mechanical. I also proposed a wind-up portable
floppy disk drive in the 1980's, which was summarily rejected
by literally everyone as a lousy idea. Oh, well.
As the drive would have to be connected to computer that could
power it, and the wind-up mechanism + interface would be more
complex than a motor -- what would be the point?
This was the early 1970's. What's a computah?
You said '80s for the floppy-disk drive, which is what I was referring to..
Sorry. I thought you meant the paper tape pager printer. I never
built the wind up floppy disk drive. You're correct that the drive
would require power to run the electronics. The plan was to power it
from a small generator connected to the clockwork spring mechanism. I
built a non-functional prototype to impress the investors. It didn't
work because I couldn't keep the 300 rpm rotation speed sufficiently
constant for reliable operation. The head actuator was run by a
stepper motor, but I had some ideas to make it mechanically driven.
When I saw the first 3.5" floppy disk drive in about 1984, I gave up.
I suppose you don't want to hear about my gasoline engine powered hard
disk drive?
The original pager was Motorola H04ANC (all germanium).
Really? Perhaps for the RF transistors, but not the rest of the device.
I'm fairly sure the H03ANC pager was all germanium xsistors. I don't
have a manual for it to check. I think (not sure) that the next
model, the Pageboy I, was all germanium, but I'll have to check the
manual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Pageboy
I know the associated walkie talkie, the HT200, was all germanium,
because I worked on enough of them. I should also have a manual for
the HT200.
I still have one or two tube type walkie talkies from that era. Pencil
tubes are fun.
http://home.netcom.com/~wa2ise/radios/penciltubes.html
--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
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