the only hints I'll give are ones that won't let you find it: it appears to be a dev unit that ties two canceled computer industry projects together, and doesn't match either of them exactly, implying there was another phase of the history that we didn't know about until now
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so, either: 1. this is a massive coincidence and Dysan decided to name their disks the same as upcoming IBM disks 2. It's a hoax someone is playing on floppy disk historians (all 5 of us) 3. Dysan at one point worked with IBM on Tabor prototype
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but as far as I can tell, until this auction showed up, there was no hint of any Dysan disk called "Tabor" and no hint Dysan & IBM had worked together on any version of the DemiDiskette.
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So, the auction pictures. The back seems to have some card edge connector, and an external power plug.pic.twitter.com/A3IR1IyTbv
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The label seems to say TLC or TTC Tabor. Anyone recognize that logo? it also looks like it might be some kind of sticker, which'd make sense if it's a prototype.pic.twitter.com/0QkNbqYQCI
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The disk definitely matches the Dysan Flex Diskette, other than the label. Interesting that the recorder number is "3251". The final one says 802950pic.twitter.com/b7MvhHRDOj
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The auction does give a hint as to where this came from, which makes no sense at all. This came from the Estate of CB Wilson, who worked for Texas Instruments from 1967-2000.
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I'm gonna see if I can message the winner to make sure we're in contact, because I'd love to see what's inside this and any additional info they have.
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there's some weirdness going on with the auction. since it ended, they relisted it twice, deleting the first one, and then relisting it as "for glimminge only". glimminge is the person who won the first auction, and I think they re-listed it because of international shipping
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and
@ptrcnull pointed out that the logo is the same as the one on the TC500 drive, which I really should remember because I OWN ONEhttps://twitter.com/ptrcnull/status/1316015010758320130 …Show this thread -
which suggests it's related to Tabor Corporation, which was founded in 1982 and dissolved in 2000: So maybe it is just a coincidence? Tabor built drives for Dysan's 3.25" Flex Diskettes.pic.twitter.com/KIy2JW2oEY
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A mention in Byte from October 1984 says that Tabor was only making 3.25" drives for the past year, before adding a 3.5" drivepic.twitter.com/vkZazCkEMM
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This does add some other interesting info: Educational Microcomputer Systems had announced a 3.25" system but was changing it to 3.5", and General Scientific Corporation was shipping workstations with 3.25" drives.
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BTW another possibility is that there's no IBM connection at all. The "fact" that the IBM disks were called "Tabor" at some trade shows has a [citation needed] on it and there don't seem to be any mentions of that on the web that don't relate back to wikipedia
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so maybe the DemiDiskette was never called Tabor in the first place and this is just someone misremembering something from 40 years ago and stuffing it into wikipedia
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End of conversation
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