19 Jul
2000
19 Jul
'00
7:35 a.m.
On Wed, 19 Jul 2000, r. 'bear' stricklin wrote:
The NeXT optical disk stored 256 MB on a single-sided
cartridge.
Third-party manufacturers offered media which could be written to on
either side for a total of 512 MB per cartridge, but you had to flip the
disk over yourself. This was supported on 25 MHz ('030 or '040) cube
systems only.
NOT "Floptical"
The '040 machines (all) supported the use of an ED
(2880 KB) 3.5" floppy
disk drive, as well. It shipped standard on all NeXTstations, and quite
possibly on all new (not upgraded) '040 cubes as well.
That's the 2.8M (4M unformatted) Barium Ferrite. I think that it actually
used a "perpendicular (vertical) recording"!
How was the reliability on those?
I used a MicroSolutions Backpack 325 2.8M on a PC for a few years; had a
number of diskettes fail FORMAT.
In contrast, the Floptical (SCSI interface) was reliable, but very slow.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com