SWTPC Advert - November 1977
From Byte - The Small Systems Journal
SWTPC announces first dual minifloppy kit under $1,000
South West Technical Products Corp was a company that started out producing project kits, but here is offering a complete Motorola 6800-based system with 4K memory and floppy disks for a total of about £11,500 in 2024 money.
This included the typewriter/VDU interface, the 6800 computer itself and - the focus of the advert - the $995 (£5,720) dual-Shugart floppy unit that was more expensive than the other two components put together.
The name "minifloppy" specifically refers to Shugart's 5¼" system, as it was a trademarked name.
Previously, floppy drives were 8" monsters, but Shugart - founded by Alan Shugart, who went on to start Seagate in 1979 - had developed the more compact and user-friendly 5¼" floppy in 1976, apocryphally "to be the size of a [folded] restaurant table napkin".
Not content with that, the company released the SASI interface in 1979. This evolved into SCSI - a fundamentally important interface for storage devices for a couple of decades.
Date created: 01 July 2012
Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2024. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.
