Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!dialogic!pencilbox!gerry
From: gerry@pencilbox.uucp (Gerry Lachac)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Sony-3100 optical SCSI drive, anybody done it yet?
Message-ID: <1058@dialogic.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jan 90 15:45:35 GMT
References: <10530@saturn.ADS.COM> <11486@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: news@dialogic.UUCP
Reply-To: gerry@pencilbox.UUCP (Gerry Lachac)
Organization: Dialogic Corp., Parsippany, NJ
Lines: 35

In article <11486@venera.isi.edu> schur@venera.isi.edu.UUCP (Sean Schur) writes:
>
>Briwall (mail order house) has been advertising 3 different optical disk
>drives for a couple months now, they call them "optical erasable drive". 
>Their sizes are approx. 550MB, 680MB and 1 Gibabyte. The prices range from
>$3500-$4500 with new cartriges for about $350 each. Yes, you can take out 
>the disk and put in a new one, simple as a 3.5" disk, in case you fill up
>your 1 Gig too fast.
>
 
I have something to add that.  We've been doing a little research for
optical backup systems around here and have discovered to interesting
little tidbits.  (At least this is what one or two sales people told
us, and you know how reliable they are :-)

	o The 1 gigabyte disks are not "ISO - approved/compatible".
	  In other words there is no "standard" for those yet.  The 
	  680 format is (as the literature puts it) "ISO compatible.

	o Supposedly, you can get the 680MB disks for $99 direct from
	  Sony, albeit unformatted.  The reason you pay $350 a pop is 
	  because they format and verify them for you.  The sales rep
	  who told us this said it takes about 45 mins. to format.
	  You can take this info with a grain of salt, I know I did.

	
This research was done for 386 UNIX systems, but an optical drive is
an optical drive.



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