Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!motcsd!xdos!doug
From: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Sony-3100 optical SCSI drive, anybody done it yet?
Message-ID: <623@xdos.UUCP>
Date: 21 Jan 90 16:13:02 GMT
References: <10530@saturn.ADS.COM>
Reply-To: doug@xdos.UUCP (Doug Merritt)
Organization: Hunter Systems, Mountain View CA (Silicon Valley)
Lines: 36

In article <10530@saturn.ADS.COM> xanthian@saturn.ads.com (Metafont Consultant Account) writes:
>
>Meandering around the net today, I learned that Sony has an optical
>disk drive available that is a SCSI beast.  Anybody know 1) if
>(presumably) this is a rewritable drive, 2) any stats on it, and most
>important, 3) has anybody hooked one up to our favorite microcomputer

Yes, it's rewritable. It's a "600Meg" drive, meaning 300Meg on each
side of the cartridge. I believe that figure is unformatted, as usual.
I'm not positive but I believe it's 65ms access.

If I recall correctly, cartridges run around $150 or thereabouts.

It's available in both single and dual cartridge models. The list price
on the single cartridge model is in the $4000 to $5000 range. A friend
of mine has one on his Mac II and appears to be happy with it, although
when you spend that much money on something, there's a psychological tendency 
to love it if it works at all! :-)

I haven't heard of anyone trying it on the Amiga yet, but odds are that
it would work just fine with any of the "open ended" scsi interfaces
(i.e. those that were done "right" and don't assume too much). The most
recent release of the Supra interface, for instance, works well with
just about any disk-like scsi device (although its transfer rate is
poor, at least on my A1000).

Current prices for optical scsi devices are close to linearly related to
their age: CD-ROM drives ~= $1500, WORM drives ~= $2500, rewritable
optical (the buzzword slips my mind) ~= $4500, very roughly speaking.
The CD-ROM and WORM drives would be trickiest to work with, since their
functionality is significantly different than that of hard disks, and
hence would definitely need special purpose drivers etc.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt		{pyramid,apple}!xdos!doug
Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow		Professional Wildeyed Visionary