info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (04/24/85)
From: lucas@cmu-psy-a (pete lucas) The trades have been claiming for some time that write-once-read-mostly optical disks were just around the corner. The thought of a removable medium with gigabyte capacity at $100-or-so a shot is most appealing. For one thing, it would permit unattended nightly incremental backups which one could afford to keep forever. What is the status of this technology? Can I buy such a device with controller for a VAX? If so, from whom and how much? How about VMS software support? What would you even want such a thing to look like to make it usable with utilities like BACKUP? A tape drive with very long reels? Perhaps each platter could be segmented into separately mountable virtual reels? There doesn't seem to be any obvious way it could emulate a block-replaceable device. -pal
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (04/25/85)
From: Jerry Wolf <WOLF@BBNG> Alcatel Thompson has a GIGADISC company (210 Avenue I, Suite D, Redondo Beach CA 90277 (213)543-5537). Their disc unit uses 1 GB discs, sells for $15200 with a SCSI interface. Apparently Emulex makes a UC13 Unibus interface that'll interface to that; somehow it's supposed to emulate a DEC disk, so no new driver? I haven't looked into it any farther than that, and those interfacing statements may well be hogwash. But there are opdisks out there now, and it may be possible to put one on a VAX.
info-vax@ucbvax.ARPA (04/27/85)
From: Jorgen_Pihl%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA I have seen the Shugart Optimem. It takes 1 Gbyte, and has a SCSI-compatible port. Now, Emulex sells SCSI host adapters for Unibus. Sothe hardware is there. But I think you'll have to write your own driver (a pain under VMS, but under RSX I think it could be worth the effort). The ideal thing would be a transparent mix of a Winchester and an optical disc. The Winchester would hold the bitmaps and pointers . Deleted fields on the optical disc would then be marked as bad spots.