cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) (01/15/85)
With all the hoopla about the various pros and cons of .5 Gbyte optical
disks, I thought it might be quite feasible to put the entire Simtel-20
archives on such a disk, in such a way that it would be easy to update.
There would be lots of room left over, and if they could be manufactured
cheaply enough maybe a series a archives could be established around the
country. I would certainly be willing to interface one of the Optimem or
equivalent drives to a CP/M system (I am aware of the logistics of such
an undertaking, with the restraints CP/M puts on file systems) and then
providing a place to put it where it could be called up and searched.
Does this sound like a reasonable undertaking ? It would be nice if we
could get Shugart to donate a drive and some disks for the publicity but
even paying for it outright is not enitirely impossible. Does anyone
know of the single unit evaluation drives cost? Also, Frank or Keith,
could one of you give an update on how much space the MICRO: archives
are using ?
--Chuck
--
- - - D I S C L A I M E R - - -
{ihnp4,fortune}!dual\ All opinions expressed herein are my
{qantel,idi}-> !intelca!cem own and not those of my employer, my
{ucbvax,hao}!hplabs/ friends, or my avocado plant. :-}Rick Conn <RCONN@SIMTEL20.ARPA> (01/17/85)
Chuck, Interesting you should bring this up. The very large capacity disks is exactly what Echelon has been addressing recently. ZRDOS2, Echelon's BDOS replacement which combines with ZCPR3, addresses 512 M bytes directly. Other features, such as no need for a ^C any more and an extended READLN function (fct 10) are also present. Interacting with ZCPR3, named dirs over a 512M space become especially useful. I haven't brought up ZRDOS2 yet, but it is sitting on my shelf waiting for installation. Rick PS See the recent newsletters from Echelon in MICRO:<CPM.ZCPR3>Z3NEWS.10?. -------