[comp.sys.next] Cheap OD's ? New OD's?

turing@saturn.ucsc.edu (Brad Gulko) (11/30/90)

	I have recently been looking for a second source
for NeXT OD's as the price from next has been increasing.
I have found some interesting information that might be
of use to some. I an further interested in getting together
a group of people to make a mass purchase ( to get a
lower price). Please mail me if interested.

The drive maker is Cannon, the model is MO502M (next told
me that the model was N3000, but cannon stated that this
was not the case)

The disks are not ISO standard disks. The disk technology
is also proprietary, thus the only original source for the disks
is Cannon. Cannon has exactly 3 resalers for the disks:

Next
Mass Micro Systems (Northern California)
Micronet (Southern California)

These are distributors and do not sell to individuals
(only to individuals with resaler's licenses)

Mass Micro gave me prices as low as $178 in quantities of 
100-250 (OD's). However, the educational price for OD's
from UC Berkeley is $176 each in quantities of 1.

Micronet referred to one of their retail distributors, but
they also indicated that the street price was around $175
and that the "suggested retail" was around $220.
However, these prices are for the new 2 sided OD's. Apparently
these new disks can be flipped over and inserted upside down and
used for another 256 Meg of storage. For $175, that is not too bad.

I have never heard of such a 2 sided OD anywhere else, and
I wonder if this is just the misunderstanding of the representative
or perhaps a new drive with heads on both side that uses a 2
sided disk. It seems that there are some pretty severe
physical design limitations on a 2 sided, flipable OD (the shutter
has to be able to slide both ways etc...) but It could be possible.

In any case, I have a request for pricing out to the other 
distributor for quantity purchases, and I intend to get ahold
of one of these 2-sided disks to try it. I'll post the results,
if any.

	Additional information gladly accepted by E-Mail, will summarize.
		-Brad Gulko

cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Chuck Herrick) (12/01/90)

Hewlett Packard's erasable ODs are 2 sided, 325MB on each side.