sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu (scott sutherland) (03/29/90)
Hello all. Most of you out there are like me and will drool over this information but cannot afford to sell your car to get one of these. But, since there are SOME people out there with $$, here goes. I just received the latest Impulse Newsletter. I will quote directly from it so as not to be mistaken: ****************************************************************** "Over the last three years we have amassed several animations, more like hundreds of animations. We use the animations for demos and shows and the like. Each animation has to be stored off to a floppy using some method of backup (We use QBack). Of course this leads to an amazing amount of disks that we have to keep track of. We have recently entered into an agreement with a local firm that makes Optical Storage Disk Drives to supply us with a drive that would solve our problem. We are very proud to introduce MEGA DRIVE. Mega Drive will store 600,000,000 (yep thats 600 Megs, 600 million bytes) of data on one removable read and write disk. Like we said for some of you this is nothing more that a pipe dream. For others however it is indeed a real product that you probably would like to buy today. The specs of the drive are listed below. If you decide that you want to discuss the drive futher please call and we will do what ever we can to help. The drive by the way carries a retail price of $5000.00. The media or floppy costs $250. For our users we are extending the following pricing. Drive with cable and software $3995.00 Floppy 600 Meg Disks $ 199.00 This is, as they say in Hollywood, a for real drive, you can order the drive today and have it in your hands in less than two days. So here are the specs. Interface SCSI Buffer Memory 256K Bytes Transfer Rate 1.2 M bytes/sec Average Access Time 61Msec (note: I think he meant msec. :*) Scott) Rotation Speed 1800 RPM Disk Size 5 1/4 inck 60 Watt Power Supply MTBF More than 20,000 hours. So friends and fellow animatiors with too many disks to keep track of, if you are interested in this MEGA DRIVE, give us a call and we will tell you more..........." On the next to the last page is the Impulse Product Guide, which states: "MEGA DRIVE The animation producer will enjoy the benefits of the 600 MegaByte, MEGA DRIVE. The system uses SCSI protocol and works with most SCSI controllers for the Amiga. The mnedia is Optical Read and Write and the media is removable. These advantages help the user with mass data storage needs to delete the need for hundreds of floppy disk. The average seek tine of the Mega Drive is 61Msec (** again I think he means msec). Unlike normal hard drives that slow down as more data is placed on the drive, the Mega Drive does not suffer from too much data. The cost of data is about 30 cents per million characters of storage. This is well below the average cost of a single dual sided floppy disk. For More Information call or write to: Impulse, Inc. 6870 Shingle Creek Parkway #112 Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55430 In State 612 566 0221 Out State 800 328 0184 FAX: 1 612 566 1822 " ************************************************************************* Please note that all grammar errors were reproduced as they were found from the letter and are not my doing. Now, don't we all wish we had the money to get one of these. I know that I do. (Drooooollll!!!) Scott Sutherland sutherla@qtp.ufl.edu