ac4@pucc-h (Putnam) (01/26/84)
--- I walked into my local ComputerLand the other day and saw a new cartridge disk drive hooked to an IBM-PC. It is made by IOMEGA Corporation, 4646 South 1500 West, Ogden, Utah 84403. They call it the Bernoulli Box. The beast has two cartridge drives, and each cartridge holds 10 megabytes! The two cartridges mount side-by-side in an enclosure that is the same size and shape as the IBM-PC system unit. When I walked in, the salesman pulled one cartridge from the drive and dropped it on the floor, then put it back and proceeded to use it! These are not "hard" disks ... they have what looks like a hard plastic disk of some type. The cartridges are about 5-6" wide by 8-9" deep by 1/2" thick. Not only do you get 20 Mbytes online with removable media, but the average access time is 30 milliseconds ... almost 3 times faster than the 10 Mbyte winnies they put in the XT. It shows, too... They can do a complete cartridge to cartridge copy in 3 minutes! The retail price for the controller to fit into the PC, the two drives in their enclosure with power, two disk cartridges, and DOS 2.00 device driver is about $3695. Additional cartridges are something like $80 each. Not exactly cheap, but it you compare it to the PC expansion cabinet, it begins to look real good. By the way, it has a pretty hefty fan on it, so it makes a good deal more background noise than an XT. Anyway, this thing sounds almost too good to be true... media that is rugged, large capacity, fast, easy backup, etc. What really has me puzzled is that (1) I haven't seen any advertising in the usual trade rags about this thing, and (2) I don't see anybody talking about "semi-floppy" (?) or whatever disk technology when they write overview articles on the state of the art. I understand from my local salesman that it was announced at COMDEX, so it is apparently relatively "new," but in the usual manner of a born-again TV salesman, he doesn't know anything about the technology, etc. Anybody know anything more about this unit? Its technology? Anyone have one yet? Tom Putnam ...!pur-ee!pucc-h:ac4
rpw3@fortune.UUCP (01/31/84)
#R:pucc-h:-49200:fortune:14700004:000:1009
fortune!rpw3 Jan 31 03:53:00 1984
Iomega is a real company. Their "Bernoulli" drive is a patented (by them)
thing, so you won't find many others out there soon. They've been around
for a while, but have mostly been trying to crack into the large OEM
manufacturers as opposed to retail.
It is really a floppy disk, but due to the Bournoulli (sp?) Effect next to
a smooth plate (either steel or the plastic jacket, I forget), the floppy
disk lies very flat and smooth. It is tolerant of dust and dirt because
there is only the media pressure against the head, and the media will
actually move out of the way of dust particles. Sort of the best of both
worlds: access/density of a hard disk, ruggedness of a floppy. I wouldn't
want to buy the disks the salesman had thrown on the floor, though, and
maybe not any drive he had put them in -- heads do get scratches, you know.
Rob Warnock
UUCP: {sri-unix,amd70,hpda,harpo,ihnp4,allegra}!fortune!rpw3
DDD: (415)595-8444
USPS: Fortune Systems Corp, 101 Twin Dolphins Drive, Redwood City, CA 94065burton@fortune.UUCP (02/10/84)
#R:pucc-h:-49200:fortune:14700005:000:597
fortune!burton Feb 9 15:01:00 1984
The IOMEGA founders were at IBM, where the product was developed. When
big Blue decided against bringing out the product in a system, the
engineers left to go out on their own.
The product was first demonstrated at the 1981 NCC. They haven't had too
much success due to their high pricing and lack of second-sourcing, both
very important to system purchasing agents and engineers.
Philip Burton 101 Twin Dolphin Drive
Fortune Systems Redwood City, CA 94065 (415) 595-8444 x 526
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{allegra,[decvax!decwrl,ucbvax]!amd70,cbosgd,harpo,hpda,ihnp4,sri-unix}
!fortune!burton