Don't know if it's germane, but the CDC STAR-100 (Cyber 200 series) MCU used a small drum. 70s-80s. Don't recall if the stations did also.
There was the "STAR Drum" blue sky that was part of the boilerplate in proposals at the time. STAR had a 512-bit wide data channel reserved for a paging device. I recall Neil Lincoln relating that they tinkered with a 100K RPM drum, but could never get it to operate for more than a few minutes. Then there was SCROLL, also mentioned in the proposals. A very wide tape wrapped around a multi-head rotating drum. I don't know if that one ever got past the pencil-and-paper stage. --Chuck
