Newsgroups: comp.robotics
Path: brunix!sgiblab!spool.mu.edu!umn.edu!msc.edu!apctrc!hawkings!natos114!zjoc01
From: zjoc01@hou.amoco.com (Jack Coats)
Subject: Re: idea: floppy loading robot
Message-ID: <1993Sep1.083902.24536@amoco.com>
Sender: news@amoco.com
Reply-To: zjoc01@hou.amoco.com
Organization: Amoco
References: <1993Sep1.112307.12558@rob.cs.tu-bs.de>
Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1993 08:39:02 CDT
Lines: 46

In article 12558@rob.cs.tu-bs.de, mp@rob.cs.tu-bs.de (Martin Pruefer DL8OAU) writes:
>>matth@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Matthew Hannigan) writes:
>>
>>
>>>I've often thought a robot that would load floppies into
>>>a machine automatically would be very useful.
>>
>>>The obvious application is for backups; a PC user starts
>>>a backup to be done overnight, and the robot loads as
>>>required.
>>
>>>How feasible do you think this would be?
>>
>>>It would have to cost less than a cheapish tape unit,
>>>probably.  Also, for backups of DOS machines, it would
>>>be a bit difficult for the robot to know when to load/unload.
>>>(it would be easy to hack a solution under unix)
>>
>>>Another application is for automatic file migration;
>>>I would like rarely used files (subject to other criteria
>>>as well) be moved to floppy disk.
>>
>>>Comments?
>>
>>>--
>>>	-Matt Hannigan
>>
>>Yes, I have seen such an application at Hewlett Packard. They used an 5 dof robot (RM501) to feed 3.5" disks into a lot of drives. They used this to format disks and to produce system disks.
>>
>>BTW: I think, doing a backup on disks is too expensive, today you get a video 8 tape for low cost, and backup is running over night.
>>
>>Martin
>>mp@rob.cs.tu-bs.de
>>
>>-- 
>>Martin Pruefer, DL8OAU, mp@rob.cs.tu-bs.de	|  Tel: +49 531 / 391-7453
>>Institute for Robotics and Computer Control	|  Fax: +49 531 / 391-5696
>>Hamburger Strasse 267, 38114 Braunschweig, FRG	|  

We do this at work, but use a 'stacker', that dos the same kind of thing for
8mm tapes...

---
-- 
                         Ideas: mine              LawyerSpeak: theirs

