My Macintosh External Disk Drive M0130 has a Sony single-sided drive revision I've never seen: OA-D34V-01. I recently received it and opened it up to check the manufacture date (April of 1984), and when I looked at the model number, it didn't match any I've seen or heard of before. I was under the impression that only the Sony OA-D34V and its revisions OA-D34V-02 and OA-D34V-22 existed.
My only theories are that it's a revision rejected by Apple, or some sort of pre-release revision prototype. However, that doesn't explain how it ended up in an M0130 and sold by Apple. Aside from speculation, I can't find any data whatsoever regarding my drive's revision, and was wondering if anyone else here has. If so, how did it come to exist?
Thanks in advance.
Picture below displaying the model number and its strange -01 revision.
Not a prototype: Look at the serial number! It is simply a short-lived product, where a defect in the design was noted and they quickly created the -02. It was not uncommon in the 80s for a product to jump in revision several times in a span of months as issues cropped up that were not noticed in initial design and testing. It is likely that many of the -01s were recalled and replaced with -02s On this, I cannot comment further, as I had no participation with SONY.
Keep in mind that SONY made these drive mechs for several companies, so they make 400,000 of them ere noticing the problem, stopped making the -01 and started making the -02. Pretty sure I have seen the -01 in LISA machines, too.
Prototype SONY mechs would not have a printed serial number. They might get a handwritten production number. Any proto stuff that does have a printed number will always be under 2,000. Period. I think that one of the largest prototype runs I have ever seen was 1,500; and the average is 10 to 150 pieces. Developer machine/part runs tend to be 100 to 2000 units.
Fair enough. I did not know that about the serial numbers, so thank you for the info. As for the possible defect, I'm thankful that such a thing doesn't seem to effect mine, with one possible exception. For all intents and purposes, it looks and functions like an -02, with the newer, quieter eject motor found in the revisions. It works as well as any M0130 in decent shape, too.
The exception I speak of is something I encountered when hooking this drive up to a Macintosh SE (original, not FDHD/SuperDrive). It kind of works, as in it reads and even boots from it. However, the first chance it gets, it ejects the disk. Every time. I don't know whether or not it's supposed to do that, but it works fine with my Macintosh Plus, which has the same drive as the SE.
Then again, maybe that has nothing to do with the quick -02 replacement. After all, the SE didn't exist yet. I'm just glad it works, and that I have an apparently rare revision. Thank you for your response, Timelord.