4 ms·

Cute. Does anyone remember the superfloppies of the late 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Superfloppy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy

Cute. Does anyone remember the superfloppies of the late 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Superfloppy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Superflop... ?

sweetbacon 11y ago
I remember stacks of zip disks as my backup mechanism <shudder>.
brodie78382 11y ago
I used to have a LS120 SuperDisk drive in my computer. I really liked the idea but it was useless because no one else had them. I think I still have the drive and several disks stashed away somewhere.
- voidz 11y ago
  Hey, I'm the other guy who had one, pleased to meet you after all those years! cackles
digi_owl 11y ago
You also had Sony's Minidisc that in the end could store 1GB in a physical format very similar to a floppy. This was magnet-optical based though, thus it involved having a laser heating the media before the magnetic arm could flip the bit.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  The 1GB was later or implied compression IIUC. First models, in the floppy disk era, were 300-400MB. Still would have been a beautiful computer storage device, but Sony sonied.
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    True, they called it HiMD. The drives could also up-format the older MD disks to get a bit more storage. That said, i think there was a version of the original MD format sold as a data drive in Japan. I think Sony had a model or two of their Vaio laptops with it built in. That said, what basically sunk the format was slow write speed and that the Sony Music tail was basically wagging the Sony Electronics dog. The MD was from day one laden with DRM, and the HiMD took it even further (want to put those MP3s on there? Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program. And the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole). This just at the time as large capacity flash was coming to market, and you could dump any random MP3 onto them with a drag and drop operation.
    - kw71 11y ago
      > The MD was from day one laden with DRM Just SCMS > Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program The HiMD machines did not make nice mp3 players because they really weren't meant to be that. Only the final HiMD decks had mp3 codec. I never converted from mp3 to atrac because atrac was a better codec. I didn't like feeling like I was listening to computer files anyway, and usually dubbed from a cd player. > the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole The last SonicStage update lets you download audio. This is important because these devices were used to record original content.
      - digi_owl 11y ago
        On paper a simple flag, but stringently enforced by every program and consumer deck out there (professional decks where a different matter). As for what was better or worse i will not get into. MP3 was already turning into the de-facto standard, and thus Sony did themselves no favors by having people go the long way round. I guess i missed the news about the last Sonicstage release, as by that time i had given up on how Sony was handing tings.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      Right, but on the CD side, Sony had no issues selling generic CD burners even if the Sony Music business probably had issues with that. I don't know how slow MW writes were, but I'd be surprised if they were slower than FD especially with the later seek time. Add weak material leading to regular data corruption and I'm really thinking that pure data MDs would have make a different world.

Cute. Does anyone remember the superfloppies of the late 90s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Superfloppy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_variants#Superflop... ?

sweetbacon 11y ago

I remember stacks of zip disks as my backup mechanism <shudder>.

brodie78382 11y ago

I used to have a LS120 SuperDisk drive in my computer. I really liked the idea but it was useless because no one else had them. I think I still have the drive and several disks stashed away somewhere.

voidz 11y ago
Hey, I'm the other guy who had one, pleased to meet you after all those years! cackles

digi_owl 11y ago

You also had Sony's Minidisc that in the end could store 1GB in a physical format very similar to a floppy. This was magnet-optical based though, thus it involved having a laser heating the media before the magnetic arm could flip the bit.

agumonkey 11y ago
The 1GB was later or implied compression IIUC. First models, in the floppy disk era, were 300-400MB. Still would have been a beautiful computer storage device, but Sony sonied.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  True, they called it HiMD. The drives could also up-format the older MD disks to get a bit more storage. That said, i think there was a version of the original MD format sold as a data drive in Japan. I think Sony had a model or two of their Vaio laptops with it built in. That said, what basically sunk the format was slow write speed and that the Sony Music tail was basically wagging the Sony Electronics dog. The MD was from day one laden with DRM, and the HiMD took it even further (want to put those MP3s on there? Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program. And the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole). This just at the time as large capacity flash was coming to market, and you could dump any random MP3 onto them with a drag and drop operation.
  - kw71 11y ago
    > The MD was from day one laden with DRM Just SCMS > Had to format convert to Atrac via some crazy program The HiMD machines did not make nice mp3 players because they really weren't meant to be that. Only the final HiMD decks had mp3 codec. I never converted from mp3 to atrac because atrac was a better codec. I didn't like feeling like I was listening to computer files anyway, and usually dubbed from a cd player. > the only way to get them back out was via the analog hole The last SonicStage update lets you download audio. This is important because these devices were used to record original content.
    - digi_owl 11y ago
      On paper a simple flag, but stringently enforced by every program and consumer deck out there (professional decks where a different matter). As for what was better or worse i will not get into. MP3 was already turning into the de-facto standard, and thus Sony did themselves no favors by having people go the long way round. I guess i missed the news about the last Sonicstage release, as by that time i had given up on how Sony was handing tings.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Right, but on the CD side, Sony had no issues selling generic CD burners even if the Sony Music business probably had issues with that. I don't know how slow MW writes were, but I'd be surprised if they were slower than FD especially with the later seek time. Add weak material leading to regular data corruption and I'm really thinking that pure data MDs would have make a different world.