4 ms·

Magneto-Optical drives were also available at that time, and were designed for data storage. The problem was they were very expensive, and needed a SCSI interfa

by orev 5y ago

Magneto-Optical drives were also available at that time, and were designed for data storage. The problem was they were very expensive, and needed a SCSI interface at the time when personal computers mostly had IDE. There really was no good solution to the interface problem until USB and SATA came along.

dghughes 5y ago
There was no good solution because there was no need for it. People weren't downloading, creating, or storing large amounts of data. Most of the stuff would fit on a floppy and you'd still have 90% of it empty. Any games would be on floppies you wouldn't dream of filling 10% your 420MB hard drive with 10 floppies at 1.44MB each. Most people didn't even have a computer and those that did were not on the Internet. Even images were rare in the early days of the Web. Music was not a thing yet or at least not the ability to download it. In 1996 I think the most files I had were either email or Corel Draw files (of nothing really just fun).
- basilgohar 5y ago
  *424MB drive I dreamed of having one back then, but not before I dreamed of having a 340MB one and running Stakker on it.
- orev 5y ago
  Your making a leap between “the time when everything was only on floppies” to “the time when everyone was doing multimedia online”, which ignores at least a decade of time starting in the mid 90s, and there absolutely was a huge need for it. During that time, the main storage media was CDs, often used for software or mp3s. Games and other materials (like Encarta) were shipped on CDs because there was no Internet with lots of media, and anyone who did have it was on dialup. Shipping large data on CDs was the way it was done. However CDs have the very obvious problem that they are not writable (CD writers were rare and very expensive for many years in the beginning), and once the writable ones came out they were still not suitable for things like random access read/write for typical documents, only really used more for archiving. That’s why Zip drives were such a game changer (and the various other, now forgotten, attempts at solving this problem). Magneto-optical fall into this same time period.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > People weren't downloading, creating, or storing large amounts of data. Yes, they were, which is why there were many attempts to solve the problem, despite no one solution winning. > Most of the stuff would fit on a floppy and you'd still have 90% of it empty. High-end, but not uncommon, displays were megapixel range truecolor displays. (Which makes how long we got stuck at FHD, which is 2MP, kind of sad). Uncompressed full screen images were significantly bigger than floppies. > Any games would be on floppies you wouldn't dream of filling 10% your 420MB hard drive with 10 floppies at 1.44MB each. Software distribution on floppies was quite compressed; you mightn’t fill your HD with one 10-floppy package (which is good, because the first 10+ floppy software package could be your OS), but it wouldn’t take many. > Most people didn't even have a computer and those that did were not on the Internet. The people that didn't have a computer really aren’t a factor in what was in demand by computer users. Those that weren't on the internet directly were often on BBS’s and online services like CompuServe, and were quite often downloading things. Also, all that changed fairly rapidly over the time in question; in 1993 under a quarter of households had a computer, and internet penetration wasn’t even a thing people surveyed. In 1997 over a third had a computer, and about half of those households were on the internet. In 2001 over half had a computer, and about 80% of them were on the internet. [0] > Music was not a thing yet or at least not the ability to download it. Music downloading was definitely a thing by the mid-1990s, even if it didn't hit the public consciousness in a big way until Napster in 1999. [0] https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/computers-internet/us-households-with-computers-and-internet-use-1984-2014 https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/computers-internet/u...

by orev 5y ago

dghughes 5y ago

There was no good solution because there was no need for it. People weren't downloading, creating, or storing large amounts of data. Most of the stuff would fit on a floppy and you'd still have 90% of it empty. Any games would be on floppies you wouldn't dream of filling 10% your 420MB hard drive with 10 floppies at 1.44MB each. Most people didn't even have a computer and those that did were not on the Internet. Even images were rare in the early days of the Web. Music was not a thing yet or at least not the ability to download it. In 1996 I think the most files I had were either email or Corel Draw files (of nothing really just fun).

basilgohar 5y ago
*424MB drive I dreamed of having one back then, but not before I dreamed of having a 340MB one and running Stakker on it.
orev 5y ago
Your making a leap between “the time when everything was only on floppies” to “the time when everyone was doing multimedia online”, which ignores at least a decade of time starting in the mid 90s, and there absolutely was a huge need for it. During that time, the main storage media was CDs, often used for software or mp3s. Games and other materials (like Encarta) were shipped on CDs because there was no Internet with lots of media, and anyone who did have it was on dialup. Shipping large data on CDs was the way it was done. However CDs have the very obvious problem that they are not writable (CD writers were rare and very expensive for many years in the beginning), and once the writable ones came out they were still not suitable for things like random access read/write for typical documents, only really used more for archiving. That’s why Zip drives were such a game changer (and the various other, now forgotten, attempts at solving this problem). Magneto-optical fall into this same time period.
dragonwriter 5y ago
> People weren't downloading, creating, or storing large amounts of data. Yes, they were, which is why there were many attempts to solve the problem, despite no one solution winning. > Most of the stuff would fit on a floppy and you'd still have 90% of it empty. High-end, but not uncommon, displays were megapixel range truecolor displays. (Which makes how long we got stuck at FHD, which is 2MP, kind of sad). Uncompressed full screen images were significantly bigger than floppies. > Any games would be on floppies you wouldn't dream of filling 10% your 420MB hard drive with 10 floppies at 1.44MB each. Software distribution on floppies was quite compressed; you mightn’t fill your HD with one 10-floppy package (which is good, because the first 10+ floppy software package could be your OS), but it wouldn’t take many. > Most people didn't even have a computer and those that did were not on the Internet. The people that didn't have a computer really aren’t a factor in what was in demand by computer users. Those that weren't on the internet directly were often on BBS’s and online services like CompuServe, and were quite often downloading things. Also, all that changed fairly rapidly over the time in question; in 1993 under a quarter of households had a computer, and internet penetration wasn’t even a thing people surveyed. In 1997 over a third had a computer, and about half of those households were on the internet. In 2001 over half had a computer, and about 80% of them were on the internet. [0] > Music was not a thing yet or at least not the ability to download it. Music downloading was definitely a thing by the mid-1990s, even if it didn't hit the public consciousness in a big way until Napster in 1999. [0] https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/computers-internet/us-households-with-computers-and-internet-use-1984-2014 https://www.infoplease.com/math-science/computers-internet/u...