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Right, I forgot about flopticals… but I guess almost everyone else did too. NeXT boxes had those, didn’t they?
by chuckadams 2y ago
Right, I forgot about flopticals… but I guess almost everyone else did too. NeXT boxes had those, didn’t they?
- wtallis 2y agoNeXT boxes used magneto-optical disks, which usually meant a laser was used to heat the magnetic material during the write process, and at lower intensity to read data optically. The optics in a floptical drive are just part of the head alignment servo mechanism, so it was probably much easier to make them cheap and backwards-compatible with mainstream floppies.
- wazoox 2y agoNope, NeXT had magneto-optical 128 MB drives, somewhat related. They were 3.5" but using an entirely different media, and were absolutely incompatible with ordinary floppies.
- ForOldHack 2y agoNeXT cubes used a 256 Mb optial drive, and some slabs has. 128Mb optical, and someone said that the turbo color slab had a 230Mb optical drive. Mine did not.
- wazoox 2y agoYes, and the Cube came first with only the slow MO drive, no hard drive because it wasn't "high tech" enough for Steve Jobs :)
- brudgers 2y agoAlmost all digital formats die in obscurity. 3” floppies, 5v SmartMedia, Jazz disks, and DAT were good ideas in the moment that were not good ideas a moment later. The logistics of reading even popular formats like Qic 40 and ADAT today are hard.
- NikkiA 2y agoThe most ironic thing, IMO, is that at the time everyone seemed to be holding their breath for Castlewood's 'Orb drive', which promised the perfection of a fast and big storage media. It was delayed so long that by the time it actually reached the market it didn't get noticed.
- brudgers 2y agoNever heard of Orb, but once upon a time, I was waiting for Tandy’s THOR. Before that Flieschman-Ponds cold fusion. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor-CD https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor-CD