And for a nads-alike, the "modern machine" can be one of the various tiny single-board linux machines. https://getchip.com/pages/chippro
It's kind of upside-down using a computer that's 8000 times more powerful than a m100 as a disk drive for an m100, but whattayagonnado? Someone was working on an implementation based on a simpler components, not cheaper or smaller, just technologically simpler, and arduino microcontroller instead of a whole pc that runs a full fledged linux OS. But hasn't quite solved some kind of rs323 problem he was having. https://ronsapartment.blogspot.com/2017/02/arduino-tpdd-tandy-portable-disk-drive.html
