Magnetooptical disk drive having improved features for reducing the size thereof in the direction normal to the disk cartridge

摘要

A disk drive (30) for use with a magnetooptical disk cartridge (10) having a magnetooptical data storage disk (12) rotatably enclosed in a generally flat, boxlike housing (14), a sliding shutter (16) mounted astraddle one edge thereof for opening and closing a pair of disk access windows (22, 24) in opposite sides of the housing. The disk drive has a cartridge cardle (38, 138) for receiving the disk cartridge as the latter is inserted in an entrance slot (36) in the disk drive casing (32, 132). Pivotally mounted to the cartridge cradle a shutter opening lever (46) opens the cartridge shutter (16) well before the disk cartridge (10) is fully inserted through the entrance slot. The electromagnet assembly (68, 168) of the magnetooptical disk drive, by which a magnetic field is generated for biasing the disk during data transfer with an optical data transducer, is positioned sufficiently close to the loaded disk cartridge (10) to appeciably reduce the height or thickness dimension of the disk drive.