trims@athena.mit.edu (Erik G Trimble) (05/03/91)
These little suckers from Insite seem to be the answer to everyone's problems. Currently, they read/write 800k,1.44M, and 20M floppies. Insite is working to tweek the drive so it can read/write to 80meg floppies. The method of read/writing to 20 or 80 Meg disks is not in the type of disk, but in the read/write head. The new drives use an optical head to achive much greater track precision - thus, they can cram almost 50 times as many tracks as the old drives. In answer to a previous question, this unfortunately means old floppy drives (including the "new" 2.88 ones) cannot be upgra ded to take the new formats. Insite claims that the drives have access times at approximately half way between those currently given by hard drives and floppy drives (ie. ~60ms) These'd be great for backup, upgrade releases, video/sound storage!!!! NeXT, DITCH THE 2.88!!!!! GO FOR THESE BABIES!!!!! oh, looks like the price to OEMs will be $400-$700 each. This is DIRT CHEAP!!! anybody else in favor of the 20Mb floppies over the 2.88s? -erik No, I am NOT afiliated with INSITE (But boy, do I wish I was...)
ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) (05/03/91)
I agree 2.88 is not much of an improvment over 1.44s and much of a disappointment after the 256Meg ODs. 20-80megs w/ decent access times sounds like the perfect solution.... How expensive are these 20-80 Disks projected to be ? When are these drives going to be ready ? Wasn't IBM going to go for the 2.88s in a BIG way ? Toshiba & 3M seems to be spending A LOT of money advertizing about the 2.88s.
melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) (05/03/91)
In article <1991May3.103620.14757@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) writes:
I agree 2.88 is not much of an improvment over 1.44s and much of a disappointment after the 256Meg ODs. 20-80megs w/ decent access times sounds like the
perfect solution....
They were the best thing available at the time. I think NeXT made the
right decision. If only the disks were cheaper.
How expensive are these 20-80 Disks projected to be ?
I think very expensive.
When are these drives going to be ready ?
This summer.
Wasn't IBM going to go for the 2.88s in a BIG way ?
Hope so.
Toshiba & 3M seems to be spending A LOT of money advertizing about the 2.88s.
Let's hope a few other companies use them. Got to drive those prices
down.
-Mikegad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (05/03/91)
In article <weaG8nv+1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > > ...(quoted comments on 20 meg floppies & phase-changed ODs)... > > There was in an article in Byte Magazine last fall. We should be > hearing more about the drives by this summer. They sound like they > should satify software distribution problems for 10 years or so. And > let's not forget the problem of backuping up the NeXT. You aren't > going to do that on a CD-ROM. While I'd love to have larger capacity floppies, I still prefer CD-ROM as a distribution medium. I have had drive problems (or operator error...) wipe out a floppy disk that I was installing from. I'd much rather have large products distributed on a medium that is permanent. And CDs only cost $2-$3 to punch out (assuming you need a few thousand copies), while these new capacity floppy drives are going to be more expensive than that. I'd really really like to have 20 meg (or larger) floppies too, of course!!! - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) (05/04/91)
In article <!53gvv@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes:
While I'd love to have larger capacity floppies, I still prefer CD-ROM as a
distribution medium. I have had drive problems (or operator error...) wipe out
a floppy disk that I was installing from. I'd much rather have large products
distributed on a medium that is permanent. And CDs only cost $2-$3 to punch
out (assuming you need a few thousand copies), while these new capacity floppy
drives are going to be more expensive than that.
I'd really really like to have 20 meg (or larger) floppies too, of course!!!
How are people backing up their disks? I heard a few complaints from
people who considered buying a NeXT that one must buy a tape drive in
order to do this in a reasonble manner. Most people aren't going to
want to spend $$$ a piece for two different pieces of hardware. I
guess that NeXT could offer both, but shipping the NeXTs with 20MB
floppies would be a definite plus. Since other computer companies are
almost sure to use them, 20MB floppies could make transfering files
among machines easier.
-Miketinyguy@cs.mcgill.ca (Yeo-Hoon BAE) (05/04/91)
In article <1991May3.103620.14757@gmuvax2.gmu.edu> ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) writes: >I agree 2.88 is not much of an improvment over 1.44s and much of a disappointment after the 256Meg ODs. 20-80megs w/ decent access times sounds like the >perfect solution.... > >How expensive are these 20-80 Disks projected to be ? > >When are these drives going to be ready ? > >Wasn't IBM going to go for the 2.88s in a BIG way ? > >Toshiba & 3M seems to be spending A LOT of money advertizing about the 2.88s. But there's one thing that concerns about these 20meg floppies... Each disks must be factory formatted, which means any disk that gets damaged during use will be useless unless sent back to the factory - not very convenient. Other than this point, I really like the drives(technically) -TG
gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) (05/04/91)
In article <8*5Gu51=1@cs.psu.edu> melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) writes: > > In article <!53gvv@rpi.edu> gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu (Garance A. Drosehn) writes: > > >While I'd love to have larger capacity floppies, I still prefer CD-ROM as a > >distribution medium. I have had drive problems (or operator error...) wipe > >out a floppy disk that I was installing from. ...(etc)... > > How are people backing up their disks? I heard a few complaints from > people who considered buying a NeXT that one must buy a tape drive in > order to do this in a reasonble manner. Most people aren't going to > want to spend $$$ a piece for two different pieces of hardware. I > guess that NeXT could offer both, but shipping the NeXTs with 20MB > floppies would be a definite plus. Since other computer companies are > almost sure to use them, 20MB floppies could make transfering files > among machines easier. Good points. Let me modify my previous comment to say I'd like the *option* of getting larger products (operating system upgrades in particular) on CD-ROM instead of floppies. I'd like a CD-ROM unit for a number of reasons, but if someone only has the money for a 20Meg floppy unit or a CD-ROM unit then the floppy will be a lot more useful. Other companies are also distributing things on CD-ROM though, particularly for huge database-type things. CD-ROM is certainly starting to take off in the Mac area, for instance, and I imagine in the PC area too (although I don't know enough about PC's to say for sure). - - - - - - - - Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@rpi.edu or gad@eclipse.its.rpi.edu ITS Systems Programmer (handles NeXT-type mail) Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy NY USA
dejnsen@caen.engin.umich.edu (Nik Anthony Gervae) (05/04/91)
In article <1991May3.082413.18742@athena.mit.edu> trims@athena.mit.edu (Erik G Trimble) writes: >These little suckers from Insite seem to be the answer to everyone's problems. >Currently, they read/write 800k,1.44M, and 20M floppies. Insite is working to tweek the drive so it can read/write to 80meg floppies. The method of read/writing to 20 or 80 Meg disks is not in the type of disk, but in the read/write head. The new drives >use an optical head to achive much greater track precision - thus, they can cram almost 50 times as many tracks as the old drives. In answer to a previous question, this unfortunately means old floppy drives (including the "new" 2.88 ones) cannot be >ded to take the new formats. [stuff deleted...] Does this mean that the 20 Meg floppies are MO? Or Phase Change? -- / Nik Gervae aka dejnsen@caen.engin.umich.edu | "It'll be finished next week, \ | CS/Linguistics stud. & NeRD at UM (go blow) | I promise!"--me | | | | | **When all else fails, bug someone who | "Just say an iguana chewed | \ knows (not me!). | up your textbook."--Jason Fox /
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (05/05/91)
ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu writes > I agree 2.88 is not much of an improvment over 1.44s and much of a > disappointment after the 256Meg ODs. 20-80megs w/ decent access times > sounds like the perfect solution.... Perfect for some things, not for others. There are several uses for removable media, but the most important ones are these: * software distribution * system backup * file exchange For software distribution, the cheaper the media, the better. To distribute a 200k application on a 256Mb optical disk was ridiculous. To put it on a 20Mb disk isn't as ridiculous, but it will fit nicely on a 1.44Kb floppy. The main reason NeXT went to the 2.88 floppy disk drive was because everybody asked for it, and software developers were among the more vocal. Even if you can factor the media price into the cost of the software, you have to consider updates, bug fixes, and so forth. That adds up to a lot of disks over time. -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us NeXT/PostScript developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-851-1785 (fax 851-1470)
ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) (05/05/91)
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes >For software distribution, the cheaper the media, the better. To >distribute a 200k application on a 256Mb optical disk was ridiculous. >To put it on a 20Mb disk isn't as ridiculous, but it will fit >nicely on a 1.44Kb floppy. If you've noticed most of the applications shipping for the NeXT come on Multiple floppies. This is because often they ship extended demos, data files, examples, help-documentation, pictures, & other goodies along with the pakage. When you are playing w/ sounds/postscript/gifs/matematica etc. you could always use the extra disk-space. Anyway there is no problem. The 20Meg drives read 1.44 disks fine. It cost us $50 (initially) for 256Megs, How expensive can 20Meg disks cost ? NeXT get us those drives !!!!!
ppham@gmuvax2.gmu.edu ( ) (05/05/91)
Another reason why I envy those w/ the OD drives is this: The 1.44/2.88 drives are fine if your dealing w/ small files, or distributing software. However on ODdrive systems if you had a small HD or your HD was full, you could always move the less important stuff to your OD & still have no problems other then it would run slower. I have a 105Meg station, due to disk-space I had to kill websters & cannot keep the on-line docs or mathmatica, or a big HD for the SoftPC, or the Tech-help on the 105HD. AND because 2.88 is not sufficient to hold any of these uncompressed &/or uninstalled I cannot run them anywhere but on the HD, so ? I loose. If I had a 20Meg drive I could keep Websters (I think approx 18Megs) on disk & still have access to the program.
barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) (05/05/91)
The ideal solution is to have a drive that accepts disks with a range of capacities. As it is, this is not the case: floppy drives accept 0.7, 1.4 and 2.8 MB---all O(1MB), on the small side. The optical drive accepts 256MB and 512MB (2-sided), all O(1GB), on the big side. What is needed is a drive that could take these sized disks, and intermediate sized as well. My experience with NeXT is that usually I usually deal with stuff in chunks of 5MB, occasionaly 20MB, and 100MB for backups and offline archives (all of comp.unix, etc). My dream drive would accept disks with sizes: 4MB 16MB 64MB 256MB, priced accordingly. With this scheme, you would never have to use more that 3 disks (just jump to the larger size otherwise), and probably 1 would always be enough (with compression). I'd expect the prices to go like $10, $25, $50, $100 (and dropping with time). How to make such a drive? starting with floppies and working up probably can't get beyond 50MB or so, and even that will take much development. Instead, why not start from the existing optical drives and work _down_? That is, why can't they just make _smaller_ disks for the current optical drive (or its succesor, which may take 3.5 inch disks). Probably the answer is that its creators didn't envision it as a replacement for floppies---they probably thought of it as the primary hard drive, which we now know to be a mistake. -- Barry Merriman UCLA Dept. of Math UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)
sherwood@space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford) (05/07/91)
Yeo-Hoon BAE writes > > But there's one thing that concerns about these 20meg floppies... > Each disks must be factory formatted, which means any disk that > gets damaged during use will be useless unless sent back to the > factory - not very convenient. > > Other than this point, I really like the drives(technically) > Nah. Back in the bad old days when CP/M ruled (Did I hear a shudder out there?) and ordinary floppy disks cost 5 bucks each (About 2 hours minimum wage for you young whippersnappers) the quality was abysmal. Soon however a raft of sector testing programs appeared. You ran the program on a disk; all bad sectors were added to a hidden file. Seems to me that similar action could be done with these critters.
bb@math.ufl.edu (Brian Bartholomew) (05/07/91)
In article <484@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) writes: > To distribute a 200k application on a 256Mb optical disk was > ridiculous. Commercial U*IX workstation software is usually distributed on a $40 40 Meg cartridge tape. Distributing NeXT software on a $50 (subsidized price) 256 Meg OD was no less reasonable. I agree that one 200K piece of executable code is pretty silly. But how about a 200K app, a meg of WriteNow manual with some pictures preindexed into Librarian format, seperate context-sensitive help, some or all of the source code or perhaps speaker/listener examples, and five good nontrivial complete demonstration workups showing what the package could do. In short, everything you ever hoped a vendor would provide with a piece of commercial software. > The main reason NeXT went to the 2.88 floppy disk drive was because > everybody asked for it, and software developers were among the more > vocal. Yes. Sigh. > Even if you can factor the media price into the cost of the software, > you have to consider updates, bug fixes, and so forth. That adds up > to a lot of disks over time. No more disks than cartridge tapes. And with the disk the user doesn't necessarily have to go through an untar/decompression step to use the software. Just stick the disk in and go. Fully functional. Read or print the manual off the disk. When the (standalone system) user wanted to "install" the software, he could drag the various pieces off the OD into /LocalAps, /LocalLibrary, etc. Tempting thought, eh? I bet the cost savings of not printing and shipping paper copies of the manual(s) (because the manuals were included in source form) easily overwhelmed the (old) $50 price of OD's. Thus, NeXT software could be cheaper to distribute than generic U*IX box software. -- "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Brian Bartholomew UUCP: ...gatech!uflorida!beach.cis.ufl.edu!bb University of Florida Internet: bb@math.ufl.edu
glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us (Glenn Reid) (05/08/91)
Brian Bartholomew writes > In article <484@heaven.woodside.ca.us> glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us > (Glenn Reid) writes: > > > To distribute a 200k application on a 256Mb optical disk was > > ridiculous. > > Commercial U*IX workstation software is usually distributed on a $40 > 40 Meg cartridge tape. Distributing NeXT software on a $50 > (subsidized price) 256 Meg OD was no less reasonable. Yes, no less reasonable, but still not reasonable. One of the major problems with UNIX workstations was (and still is, to a large extent) distribution media. That's why SPARCstations have floppy drives, and (part of) why UNIX workstation sales are dwarfed by PCs and Macs. Now, before this turns into a wide-focus discussion on UNIX workstations versus PCs, let me attempt to bring it sharply back to where it started by saying simply that cheaper distribution media is better for software developers (even considering on-line help and manuals and such), but yes, I also like the power and flexibility of all that disk space that was on the OD's. We (RightBrain Software) distributed TouchType on optical disks (because we had to), complete with on-line documentation in both FrameMaker and PostScript form. When the floppies came out, we could still fit the whole thing on one 1.44Mb floppy using the Installer package, which compressed everything quite nicely. And we sent free 2.0 upgrades to the installed base because the media was cheap, and because we believe in free upgrades. -- Glenn Reid RightBrain Software glenn@heaven.woodside.ca.us NeXT/PostScript developers ..{adobe,next}!heaven!glenn 415-326-2974 (NeXTfax 326-2977)
petrilli@wookumz.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Chris Petrilli) (05/08/91)
In article <1991May6.185938.20026@cs.UAlberta.CA> sherwood@space.ualberta.ca (Sherwood Botsford) writes: Yeo-Hoon BAE writes > > But there's one thing that concerns about these 20meg floppies... > Each disks must be factory formatted, which means any disk that > gets damaged during use will be useless unless sent back to the > factory - not very convenient. > > Other than this point, I really like the drives(technically) > Nah. Back in the bad old days when CP/M ruled (Did I hear a shudder out there?) and ordinary floppy disks cost 5 bucks each (About 2 hours minimum wage for you young whippersnappers) the quality was abysmal. Soon however a raft of sector testing programs appeared. You ran the program on a disk; all bad sectors were added to a hidden file. Seems to me that similar action could be done with these critters. Perhaps, but I do believe that this is a step backwards. I was around and using CP/M machines in their "hay day", which was the late 70s and early 80s, and believe me that though this was a way to do it, many of us went to systems that could format thier own disks, and run decent floppies (like a CompuPro). When 8" floppies ruled, the quality wasn't that bad, I usually only got (and even still only get) a few bad floppies (any errors constitute a bad floppy) out of a hundered. I don't think that 20Mb floppies are teh wave of the future, in fact I don't think that floppies period are going to last too much longer (5 years laybe), as the price of CD-ROM drives are coming down, and, in my humble opinion, that is where software distribution will and should move. With the cost of a CD-ROM only about $1 for the manufacturer, floppies can't compete, and with the increasing size of programs (X11 consumes 60Mb), CD-ROMS will be the only way to realistically distribute any software. Floppies in my opinion, will be relagated to humble uses, such as backing up a couple files, and transfering small amounts of data. Magneto-optical systems will become the BIG transfer medium, and tape will remain as the backup method of choice. PS: Ever wonder how much you could store on an 8" floppy if you used the new barrium-ferrite coating.... now that's progress. Chris Petrilli -- + Chris Petrilli | Internet: petrilli@gnu.ai.mit.edu + Insert silly disclaimer drivel here.