xanthian@saturn.ads.com (Metafont Consultant Account) (01/20/90)
Meandering around the net today, I learned that Sony has an optical disk drive available that is a SCSI beast. Anybody know 1) if (presumably) this is a rewritable drive, 2) any stats on it, and most important, 3) has anybody hooked one up to our favorite microcomputer yet? Byte addicts anonymous want to know! -- Again, my opinions, not the account furnishers'. xanthian@well.sf.ca.us xanthian@ads.com (Kent Paul Dolan) Kent, the (bionic) man from xanth, now available as a build-a-xanthian kit at better toy stores near you. Warning - some parts proven fragile. -> METAFONT, TeX, graphics programming done on spec -- (415) 964-4486 <-
schur@venera.isi.edu (Sean Schur) (01/21/90)
In article <10530@saturn.ADS.COM> xanthian@saturn.ads.com (Metafont Consultant Account) writes: > >Meandering around the net today, I learned that Sony has an optical >disk drive available that is a SCSI beast. Anybody know 1) if >(presumably) this is a rewritable drive, 2) any stats on it, and most >important, 3) has anybody hooked one up to our favorite microcomputer >yet? Briwall (mail order house) has been advertising 3 different optical disk drives for a couple months now, they call them "optical erasable drive". Their sizes are approx. 550MB, 680MB and 1 Gibabyte. The prices range from $3500-$4500 with new cartriges for about $350 each. Yes, you can take out the disk and put in a new one, simple as a 3.5" disk, in case you fill up your 1 Gig too fast. I called up Briwall's tech line for some answers. They said the drives are actually made for Macs (too bad) but there are currently 3 companies supporting them with SCSI controllers for the Amiga (I think one was GVP, but I'm not sure). I originally saw the ads in Amiga World. I have no affiliation with Briwall or Amiga World. - Sean Schur
doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt) (01/22/90)
In article <10530@saturn.ADS.COM> xanthian@saturn.ads.com (Metafont Consultant Account) writes: > >Meandering around the net today, I learned that Sony has an optical >disk drive available that is a SCSI beast. Anybody know 1) if >(presumably) this is a rewritable drive, 2) any stats on it, and most >important, 3) has anybody hooked one up to our favorite microcomputer Yes, it's rewritable. It's a "600Meg" drive, meaning 300Meg on each side of the cartridge. I believe that figure is unformatted, as usual. I'm not positive but I believe it's 65ms access. If I recall correctly, cartridges run around $150 or thereabouts. It's available in both single and dual cartridge models. The list price on the single cartridge model is in the $4000 to $5000 range. A friend of mine has one on his Mac II and appears to be happy with it, although when you spend that much money on something, there's a psychological tendency to love it if it works at all! :-) I haven't heard of anyone trying it on the Amiga yet, but odds are that it would work just fine with any of the "open ended" scsi interfaces (i.e. those that were done "right" and don't assume too much). The most recent release of the Supra interface, for instance, works well with just about any disk-like scsi device (although its transfer rate is poor, at least on my A1000). Current prices for optical scsi devices are close to linearly related to their age: CD-ROM drives ~= $1500, WORM drives ~= $2500, rewritable optical (the buzzword slips my mind) ~= $4500, very roughly speaking. The CD-ROM and WORM drives would be trickiest to work with, since their functionality is significantly different than that of hard disks, and hence would definitely need special purpose drivers etc. Doug -- Doug Merritt {pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow Professional Wildeyed Visionary
gerry@pencilbox.uucp (Gerry Lachac) (01/22/90)
In article <11486@venera.isi.edu> schur@venera.isi.edu.UUCP (Sean Schur) writes: > >Briwall (mail order house) has been advertising 3 different optical disk >drives for a couple months now, they call them "optical erasable drive". >Their sizes are approx. 550MB, 680MB and 1 Gibabyte. The prices range from >$3500-$4500 with new cartriges for about $350 each. Yes, you can take out >the disk and put in a new one, simple as a 3.5" disk, in case you fill up >your 1 Gig too fast. > I have something to add that. We've been doing a little research for optical backup systems around here and have discovered to interesting little tidbits. (At least this is what one or two sales people told us, and you know how reliable they are :-) o The 1 gigabyte disks are not "ISO - approved/compatible". In other words there is no "standard" for those yet. The 680 format is (as the literature puts it) "ISO compatible. o Supposedly, you can get the 680MB disks for $99 direct from Sony, albeit unformatted. The reason you pay $350 a pop is because they format and verify them for you. The sales rep who told us this said it takes about 45 mins. to format. You can take this info with a grain of salt, I know I did. This research was done for 386 UNIX systems, but an optical drive is an optical drive. uunet!dialogic!gerry | "Even a dead plant turns | Dialogic Corporation OR | over a new leaf | 300 Littleton Rd gerry@dialogic.UUCP | when the wind blows." | Parsippany, NJ 07054 | | (201)334-1268 X193