info-mac@uw-beaver.UUCP (10/12/84)
From: Mike O'Dell <mo@seismo.ARPA> The latest issue (Monday, October 8) has an article announcing that HP has renamed the HP 150 touchscreen machine which uses the Sony 3.5" microfloppy. The article also announced that the machine now comes with double-sided 3.5" drives! Maybe this means "the technology can now make them in quantity" and we can look forward to an Apple announcment. A friendly person at a local computer store said that they were going to a "big meeting" with Apple people, and the last time they went to such a meeting they were surprised by the 512K announcement. Well, here's to hope. But this same article raises an interesting issue. The blurb says the dual-sided drive stores 1.4 Megabytes. Does this mean the single-sided version on the HP 150 stores 700K???? Well, yes and no. A check with a local store selling the HP 150 indicates that while the drive is capable of doing about 710K single-sided, previous versions of the software only format it for about 250K, but the next release is said to support the full 700K, which makes sense, if you intend to get the good from the double-sided drive. So, where is the other 300K on the Macintosh version????? If the density remains the same, a dual-sided MacSony will store only a bit more than a single-sided HPSony. That is a real screw, as far as I can see. However, the Apple II doesn't get very much on a diskette, either. Is this an example of "the Woz's" fabled hardwareless design ability??? If so, I am very much unimpressed. Finally, keep in mind that Hitachi just announced a 9.5 Megabyte 8" floppy with a 1 Megabyte/second transfer rate and 60 msec. average seek times, which will sell in quantity for about $750. While I am not for a second advocating a return to the 8" blunderbus form-factor, I cannot help but think this technology will quickly flow down to smaller formats. I think the world of the Macintosh; I just hope the design isn't so close-ended it cannot take advantage of the available technology. -Mike O'Dell Return-Path: <mo@seismo.ARPA> Received: from seismo.ARPA by SUMEX-AIM.ARPA with TCP; Wed 10 Oct 84 06:38:14-PDT Return-Path: <mo@seismo.ARPA> Received: by seismo.ARPA; Wed, 10 Oct 84 09:38:14 EDT Date: Wed, 10 Oct 84 09:38:14 EDT From: Mike O'Dell <mo@seismo.ARPA> Message-Id: <8410101338.AA23851@seismo.ARPA> To: info-mac@sumex-aim Subject: Correction - Macintosh disks are DENSER than HP150! Sorry for the misinformation in my earlier message. That is what I get for (1) reading my mail out of order, and (2) believing a salesperson at a computer store. The October 1 issue of Electronics Week has a picture of the new HP150 showing 2 drives in the machine, and the text clearly explains that the machine has a TOTAL capacity of 1.4 Megs, or 710K per drive (double-sided drives). So, I hereby apologize to The Great Woz for impuning his talents. Doing 400K per side is noticably better than the 355K that HP is getting. So, once again, the Mac is shown to be a closet technology leader. Now if they will just get the double-sided drives into the Mac..... -Mike O'Dell