Oh yes.
Back in the late 80's, I delivered some 13-14 autoloader-equipped media
conversion systems to norwegian, finnish and danish customers.
The problem they solved, was that the customers customers had a variety
of floppy disc formats, like Norsk Data, IBM, CP/M, IBM 3740 (which
itself had varying densities and single/double side), and many others.
These discs had to be read and/or written, but checking how each disc
had to be handled, was cumbersome and error-prone.
Based on a request from BBS in Norway, I developped a conversion system
based on "InterMedia for Windows", Trace / Mountain 3.5" 5.25" and 8"
autoloaders, and Intermec hardware.
Barcodes were glued to the media, which could then be read by a barcode
scanner mpunted inside the autoloaders. This barcode could be a
customer-id, a filename, a project name, or whatever. Some also had a
reference to the formatname in InterMedia
The last customer, a Employers Union, stopped handling floppies in 2007.
To give an example of the transactions handled by 1 customer (although
with 3 conversions systems) : if the system was dead for 1 full day, the
interest they lost on the transactions, would buy them a , new manual
conversion system, about 130.000 dkk (£15.000 or so)
In its most busy period, all transactions on magnetic media, delivered
to the bank, would go through my systems, apart from IBM 3480-3490
cassettes.
All the best
Nico
On 2024-03-09 22:55, Bill Degnan via cctalk wrote:
Does anyone have interest in vintage diskette duplication / duplication
machines? Would this make for an interesting VCF exhibit? Does/did anyone
use these commercially?
Bill
