1 Jul
2010
1 Jul
'10
10:33 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 2010 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: Iomega Bernoulli Box 20+20 (A220H)
On 1 Jul 2010 at 12:29, Dave McGuire wrote:
I had the chance to pick up a few Bernouli 5.25" drives 5 years ago for free
with media and passed, instead I loaded my car up with a 1.3GB MO drive and
100 carts (40 or so NIB). These days when I actually collect computers that
came before the 386 era I kind of regret not grabbing the Bernouli drives.
Zip, Jazz, and Sparc do not seem as rugged as the Syquest 44/88MB carts I do
have (they look like HD platters). Were the Bernouli 5.25" some kind of
super flexible floppy?
For a time about ten years ago, the 5.25"
Bernoulli drives were
appearing at scrappers by the hundreds. I really regret not having
grabbed a drive or two. They'd be very handy now for PDP-11 hacking.
Even the 5.25" units were built like tanks. I still have a dual 90MB
unit here that occasionally sees use. The largest made was, what,
230MB?
I think the thing that doomed them was the price--they weren't cheap
and the bytes-per-buck got to be too low for competition.
The same with MO drives probably holds. I may still have a Pinnacle
Apex 4.3GB drive here somewhere. In addition to being somewhat
delicate, it was very expensive when compared to a standard IDE
drive.
I don't consider the later cheap removable-media drives like Zip,
Jaz, Sparq... to be in the same reliability category as the
Bernoullis. It's a shame that the technology was abandoned.
--Chuck