williamo@hpcupt1.HP.COM (William O'Saughnessy) (08/30/88)
I just purchased 20 bulk 88 cent each 3.5" 720kb diskettes. I used a soldering iron to put a hole in them at the proper spot for 1.44 megers. I formatted 6 of them with a formatter that checks for bad sectors. There were no errors in the format process. I filled them with data and copied them to nul to verify read without error. There were no errors on the six I tested. To the question "Are we being ripped off?", I believe we can answer a firm YES!. By the way I am very happy with the Toshiba 1.44 meg diskette drive that I used for the above tests. As always no guarantees are implied or given for any of the above, its just the truth as best I know it. Bill O'Shaughnessy
arwall@athena.mit.edu (Anders R Wallgren) (09/01/88)
In article <5930013@hpcupt1.HP.COM>, williamo@hpcupt1 (William O'Saughnessy) writes: > > I just purchased 20 bulk 88 cent each 3.5" 720kb diskettes. I used a > soldering iron to put a hole in them at the proper spot for 1.44 megers. > I formatted 6 of them with a formatter that checks for bad sectors. > There were no errors in the format process. I filled them with data > and copied them to nul to verify read without error. There were no > errors on the six I tested. To the question "Are we being ripped off?", > I believe we can answer a firm YES!. > Well, you can believe what you want, but that is hardly an accurate test of the suitability of LD diskettes for HD use. Let me know six months down the road when you've been using these things extensively. As I've said before, there is only one question that determines whether you use LD disks in place of the (much) more expensive HD's: how important is your data to you? -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Anders Wallgren Back by popular demand: | | arwall@athena.mit.edu Bush-Noriega '88 - A Crack Team! |
dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) (09/01/88)
Following up this discussion: My AT has a high-density disk drive that
writes 1.2 megabytes to a floppy disk. High density floppy disks cost
me 90 cents apiece the last time I bought a hundred of them.
So why is everybody so enthusiastic about these 3.5-inch drives that
let you write 1.44 megabytes (0.24 megs more than my AT's high-density
drive) for a small fortune per disk and without preserving the ability
to exchange data with the standard PC? Is the ability to put a
3.5-inch disk in your shirt pocket so vital?
Did IBM pull the wool over people's eyes by convincing them this was a
remarkable innovation? How much more are you paying for that 0.24
megs? How many years can an Immense Big Mountain exist before it is
washed in the sea?
--
Rahul Dhesi UUCP: <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesipjh@mccc.UUCP (Pete Holsberg) (09/02/88)
I paid $.50 each for 50 1.2MB diskettes from MEI.
eric@dad.UUCP (Eric Schilling) (09/02/88)
in article <3832@bsu-cs.UUCP>, dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi) says: > > So why is everybody so enthusiastic about these 3.5-inch drives that > let you write 1.44 megabytes (0.24 megs more than my AT's high-density > drive) for a small fortune per disk and without preserving the ability > to exchange data with the standard PC? Is the ability to put a > 3.5-inch disk in your shirt pocket so vital? > I have both a 1.2M 5.25" drive and a 1.44M 3.5" drive and I prefer the 3.5" drive by far. While it is true that media costs are prohibitive, they are coming down. I don't think that even the most disk hungry user is going to want that many of them though. The real reason I prefer my 3.5" is because I can store a lot more information in a lot less shelf space. Cost aside, which would you rather manage, 100 1.44M 3.5 disks or about the same number of 5.25's? What about 200 or 500 disks? When 360K floppy disks first came out, there was a lot of grumbling about how much more they cost than 180K floppies and there was griping when the 1.2M floppy format made its debut but, the prices went down to more reasonable levels when the formats became widely used. The same thing is going to happen with 1.44M HD disks, it is just going to take a while. Eric Schilling m-net!gandalf
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (09/03/88)
Rahul, I could make the same argument about my 8" 1.25 M diskettes
on my NEC APC. 8" diskettes used to be pretty cheap compared to
5.25" disks, too. I guess size DOES matter to some people.
Remember Apple's advertising for the IIc? "We made the computer
smaller, by building the disk drive in!"?
(Personally, I think they should have built two disk drives in
and made it twice as small.)
Mike Berger
Department of Statistics
Science, Technology, and Society
University of Illinois
berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu
{ihnp4 | convex | pur-ee}!uiucuxc!clio!bergerldh@hcx1.SSD.HARRIS.COM (09/08/88)
I too have been burned by better, but as of yet un-accepted equipment (I was of the poor soles that purchased Toshiba printers when everyone else was gogely- eyes over the primitive Epsons) ... but with the 3.5" floppies ... I may not wait to purchase the 1.44M drives ... but will probably wait to purchase the 1.44M floppies (as compared to 720Ks). My reason is simpler ... need to work with my wife's laptop. Leo Hinds