27 Mar
2023
27 Mar
'23
2:49 p.m.
On 3/26/23 23:10, Ali via cctalk wrote:
In the golden age of the floppy before its downfall
caused by CD-R, CD-RW
and flash USB a number of new technologies were introduced to allow for
cheap removable storage (Yes MO drives existed but they were expensive).
Many of the tech were a great step forward. For example the LS-240 drives
from Panasonic/3M (Imation) allowed reading and writing to 120MB, 240MB,
1.44MB, and 720KB disks. They were also compatible with weird formats like
IBM's XDF and even allowed the storage of 32MB on a standard 1.44MB floppy
disk. To be backwards compatible they used a separate read/write head for
regular floppies. However, none of the formats with backward compatibility
read or wrote to 2.88MB ED disks.
ED never caught on, I suspect because of very little bang-for-the-buck.
The disks never came down very far off the $5/disk level. Too little,
too late. As far as high-density floppies, there were many contenders,
all failing to capture significant market share. I still have a pile of
Caleb "IT" drives and disks offering 144 MB, for example.
However, the LS120 drives do have a practical use--I put them in later
systems with IDE connectors that would otherwise go unused (the
primary-use connections are SATA), when I'm building a system into an
older case that still has a place for a 3.5" floppy. Linux still
recognizes the the drive.
--Chuck