The only person who ever promulgated the "Dr. Wang bar napkin" story was Jim Porter who was not in any way involved with the decision as to the size of the 5½ drive or media size and only began telling his tale many years after the decision.
Both Massaro and Adkisson deny there was ever such a meeting in a bar with Dr. Wang. Some doubt Dr. Wang was ever in a bar with a vendor :-) My research suggests customers of Adkisson, e.g. Lanier, and not Wang Labs, asked for a smaller and less expensive drive, with media about the size of a cocktail napkin. Adkisson took this request to SA management. Wang was then their big customer for 8-inch drives. Massaro and Adkisson then did discuss this with Dr. Wang who did express a need for such a drive as a replacement; faster, more reliable and less expensive than the 8-track tape drive used by Wang Labs. It was also presented to Mohawk Data who was also interested. Shugart engineering then sized the drive based upon a survey of the size of 8 track tape drives and then sized the media as what is the largest that could reasonably fit within the drive envelope. The fact that the media size is about the size of some cocktail napkins is a coincidence. BTW as far as I can tell there is no standard size for cocktail napkins circa 1976 and the one sample I found from that era is smaller than the 5¼-inch medium envelope. The corruption of history is indeed tragic both here and at the Smithsonian - BTW, I did send their webmaster a request for correction Tom -----Original Message----- From: Fred Cisin [mailto:ci...@xenosoft.com] Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2022 3:37 PM To: dwight via cctalk Subject: [cctalk] Re: "Revival" of a dedicated Micropolis webpage on internet Adkisson and Masaro now deny the whole "bar napkin disk" story; In agreement that 8" was larger than desired, they asked Dr. Au Wang "What size should it be?" Wang picked up the bar napkin (the meeting was not in a conference room), and said, "This size". They took the napkin back to the lab and measured it. and the Smithsonian says that SA400 was 3.25". Yes, the loss of our history is just tragic. On Sat, 20 Aug 2022, dwight via cctalk wrote: > Maybe it is on a size reduction. > Dwight > > ________________________________ > From: geneb via cctalk < <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org> cctalk@classiccmp.org> > Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2022 7:47 AM > To: Liam Proven via cctalk < <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org> cctalk@classiccmp.org> > Cc: geneb < <mailto:ge...@deltasoft.com> ge...@deltasoft.com> > Subject: [cctalk] Re: "Revival" of a dedicated Micropolis webpage on > internet > > On Wed, 17 Aug 2022, Liam Proven via cctalk wrote: > >> On Tue, 16 Aug 2022 at 23:51, Fred Cisin via cctalk >> < <mailto:cctalk@classiccmp.org> cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: >>> >>> 1) because they need to keep reinforcing until the very last SA400 >>> is buried. >>> > > Fred, Don't forget the SA390 in every Disk II. ;) > >> I had to look up SA400. I'm too young. >> >> The Smithsonian has one. They say it's a 3¼ inch drive. >> >> <https://www.si.edu/object/microcomputer-peripheral-shugart-sa400-disk> https://www.si.edu/object/microcomputer-peripheral-shugart-sa400-disk >> -drive:nmah_334325 >> > > Now THAT is just tragic. > > g. > > -- > Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 > <http://www.f15sim.com> http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. > <http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll> http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. > Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. > > ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value > database for the masses, not the classes. > <http://scarlet.deltasoft.com> http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!
