barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) (09/11/90)
The latest Byte (15th Anniversary Issue, pg 188) has a product
review of a new type of floppy drive that is the same size
and shape as a standard 3.5" drive, but the floppies hold
a whopping 20MB. If NeXT has to switch to floppies, this is
the type of drive I could live with. (You might actually
fit TopDraw on one floppy!).
Info:
* currently only available for IBM PC's (yuck),
* $800 price tage, $25/floppy (= $1.25/MB) (likely to drop soon)
* 35 ms access time
As the article said, such a drive is _not_ that appetizing for the
IBM PC crowd: they can get a faster 40MB hard drive for half the price, and
they don't have a pressing need for larger floppies.
However---this would be the _perfect_ drive for the
power-user-cutting-edge NeXT crowd:
(1) we need _big_, transportable media
(2) To us, the price is a bargain---the floppy drive currently available
for the NeXT (standard 1.44MB) costs about $800; and $25/disk
is << than the cost of flopticals.
(3) To us, 35ms access time is pretty snappy, compared to the OD.
(4) We just had our OD pulled out from under us, so we need
some comparable alternative for the future.
So, Yo NeXT! Why don't you get these folks on the line
(I forget the name---something like Xor---but they're based in GA)
and get them developing for NeXT---Maybe even offer to make them the
standard drive on future machines. They'd have a target market,
we'd have our big floppies media, and NeXT would still
be on the leading edge of storage media. We'd all be better off.
--
Barry Merriman
UCLA Dept. of Math
UCLA Inst. for Fusion and Plasma Research
barry@math.ucla.edu (Internet)edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG) (09/13/90)
In article <344@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes: >The latest Byte (15th Anniversary Issue, pg 188) has a product >review of a new type of floppy drive that is the same size >and shape as a standard 3.5" drive, but the floppies hold >a whopping 20MB. If NeXT has to switch to floppies, this is >the type of drive I could live with. (You might actually >fit TopDraw on one floppy!). [further descriptions deleted] >(I forget the name---something like Xor---but they're based in GA) [stuff deleted] The companies that actually make this kind of hardware are Brier and Insite. NeXT would deal with them rather than an OEM. It is unfortunate that the industry failed to pick up and leverage the large ODs, but it is clearly difficult to produce that kind of magnitude of useful data for your average application, esp. when the data is accessed with the rates, reliability, cost, and noise of the NeXT optical drive. Some day, not too far in the future, we will need this because voice annotation and telephony and sound will be routine and large full-color rendered graphics will be common and easily-produced, but this is still not mainstream and probably will not be for a few more years (when the technology- cost point comes down). From a purely marketing point of view, things would be different if the media cost $10, even at 1/2 the capacity. But failing that, I wouldn't mind a CD ROM drive; I tend to produce far less information than I consume, and publish even less of it (and when I do, it isn't very often), so a $2 read-only medium is a reasonable compromise. I propose that there are two access patterns that, for today and for most people, are distinct: 1. Frequent exchange of information 2. Exchange of huge sets of information For the next few years at least, the first will tend to be smaller datasets, and the latter will be less frequent. By virtue of the technology and cost-effectiveness of the technology, a hybrid of cheap large read-only transportable media with fast read-write fixed media and slow networks can meet most of my needs. Yes, a fast, transportable, cheap read-write media would be better. Yes, FDDI+ optical LAN would be better. But they are still expensive. NeXT was just too far ahead of the technology. My 2 cents. -- Edward Jung Microsoft Corp. My opinions do not reflect any policy of my employer.
mdeale@vega.acs.calpoly.edu (Myron (the one in Calif.) Deale) (09/18/90)
In article <57380@microsoft.UUCP> edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG) writes: >In article <344@kaos.MATH.UCLA.EDU> barry@pico.math.ucla.edu (Barry Merriman) writes: >>and shape as a standard 3.5" drive, but the floppies hold >>a whopping 20MB. If NeXT has to switch to floppies, this is >[further descriptions deleted] > >The companies that actually make this kind of hardware are Brier >and Insite. NeXT would deal with them rather than an OEM. > >It is unfortunate that the industry failed to pick up and leverage >the large ODs, but it is clearly difficult to produce that kind >of magnitude of useful data for your average application, esp. >when the data is accessed with the rates, reliability, cost, and >noise of the NeXT optical drive. Some day, not too far in the A day much like today. If I might humbly add my 2 cents too; it's a real kick in the pants to record stuff off a CD (via a Digital Ears-like device, kudos to rmayfiel@data) and fill up an opti. Around here we have PS/2's and NeXT's in the same lab, and firing up the Beatles or R.Plant or Beethoven or Oingo Boingo (?) has netted a few priceless stares, I hesitate to admit. :-) > ... >From a purely marketing point of view, things would be different >if the media cost $10, even at 1/2 the capacity. But failing that, >I wouldn't mind a CD ROM drive; I tend to produce far less information >than I consume, and publish even less of it (and when I do, it isn't >very often), so a $2 read-only medium is a reasonable compromise. You have better experience with the market. And of course students can usually only afford to consume what's on the net. However, I don't think I'm alone in starting more ambitious projects. Programs that work with large libraries of images or sound signals. The Insite Floptical Drive (registered, I believe) is an excellent product and I have been hoping for their success over the past 3 years. I wanted to port their drive to the Mac II. For the NeXT, I wonder if going out on the limb with the opti is too much for now; i.e. should NeXT take another gamble? Fortunately, I don't make that decision. I'm not (yet) in the position of market forecasting and thus don't have an adequte plan to replace the opti. Partially because I'm satisfied, despite the noise and frequent problems. If you want to hit me over the head with FDDI (or FDDI+, or SONET) and color displays, and awesome processors ... great! then FrameMaker will run quicker. >NeXT was just too far ahead of the technology. I draw a different conclusion. >Edward Jung >Microsoft Corp. -Myron // My opinions are 1) my own and not my employers, and 2) free.
edwardj@microsoft.UUCP (Edward JUNG) (09/19/90)
In article <26f5b325.119f@petunia.CalPoly.EDU> mdeale@vega.acs.calpoly.edu.UUCP (Myron Deale) writes: > >>It is unfortunate that the industry failed to pick up and leverage >>the large ODs, but it is clearly difficult to produce that kind >>of magnitude of useful data for your average application, esp. >>when the data is accessed with the rates, reliability, cost, and >>noise of the NeXT optical drive. Some day, not too far in the > > A day much like today. If I might humbly add my 2 cents too; >it's a real kick in the pants to record stuff off a CD (via a Digital >Ears-like device, kudos to rmayfiel@data) and fill up an opti. Around >here we have PS/2's and NeXT's in the same lab, and firing up the >Beatles or R.Plant or Beethoven or Oingo Boingo (?) has netted a few >priceless stares, I hesitate to admit. :-) > Well that *is* fun, but unfortunately the NeXT machine OD is just a tad too slow to do real-time recording at 16-bit 44.1kSamples/sec stereo. Which is really unfortunate since sound is one of the things that leverage the OD capacity that is tangable to many end-users (gigabyte atmospheric datasets are not, and although large color images *are*, the tools that require them generally require something faster than the OD for loading the images, or something larger for storing sequences). I'm a big fan of OD; I have used them even before the NeXT machine came out, assisting in the writing of various OD device drivers, and prior to that, WORM. But the mainstream market needs a better device before it will embrace OD en masse. Particularly there needs to be better ways of creating large data for OD (and perhaps even better laws, since distribution of rerecorded songs with a product or even to friends and acquaintances is presently considered to be a copyright infringement, and even samples are borderline) in order to justify OD over CD-ROM as a mass-market requirement. I might argue that if we can assume that people are going to become more and more networked, then people will more likely assemble pieces of existing data in novel ways than create huge volumes of new data (again I'm talking mainstream), which argues that link/context information rather than the entire datasets needs to be moved around. Long-term this argues against OD-like systems unless they can supplant primary media (like HD), or become more effective as a backup media. > >-Myron >// My opinions are 1) my own and not my employers, and 2) free. -- Edward Jung Microsoft Corp. My opinions do not reflect any policy of my employer.