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 [[1330|1977]] in [[now]] money.

This included the typewriter/VDU interface, the 6800 computer itself and - the focus of the advert - the $995 ([[660|1977]]) dual-Shugart floppy unit that was more expensive than the other two components put together.

The name "minifloppy" specifically refers <a href="ads_027">to Shugart's 5¼" system</a>, 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.