Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!oakhill!motaus!skipper
From: skipper@motaus.sps.mot.com (Skipper Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: Why no floppy card?
Message-ID: <1991Jan14.181643.5@motaus.sps.mot.com>
Date: 14 Jan 91 18:16:43 GMT
References: <4439@mindlink.UUCP>
Organization: Motorola Semiconductor, Austin, Texas
Lines: 45

In article <4439@mindlink.UUCP> a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) writes:
>In <1991Jan3.003449.1@ccvax.iastate.edu>, taab5@ccvax.iastate.edu
>           <in another group>             Marc Barrett writes:
>|
>|   CASE 5: HIGH-DENSITY FLOPPY DRIVES:
>|   High-density 1.44MB 3.5" floppy drives have been available for PC/AT
>| and 80386-based systems for several years.
>|    [...]
>|    Now that 2.88MB drives are becoming increasingly common,
>
>    I am a little surprised that no third party manufacturer has thrown
> together a floppy controller card that would support regular IBMish
> 2.88M, 1.44M & 720K drives. I'm sure a lot of people would much rather
> use the 2.88M disks for backups.
>    -harvey
>
> "Let's see. George Bush is going to war to protect a feudal monarchy &
> it has nothing to do with oil? Tell that to a Tibetan, an East Timoran."
>                                                           -lenny
>      Harvey Taylor      Meta Media Productions
>       uunet!van-bc!rsoft!mindlink!Harvey_Taylor
>               a186@mindlink.UUCP

Why would anybody want to use a 2.88M floppy (that almost no one uses currently)
when they could get an Insite Peripheral's Floptical which holds 20M.  Before
anyone goes off and shouts "But they aren't shipping" I have talked with Insite
and they are shipping evaluation units right now (which is about all the 2.88M
drives are doing) and expect to be up to full volume RSN (as usual, whatever
that means).  This is a SCSI drive, so all you need is a SCSI controller instead
of hacking your 500 to add a new floppy controller, and it reads any format you
can program it to handle (with onboard ROM handling IBM 720K and 1.44M from the
factory).  They expect to be able to handle up to 80M on future versions of the
drive, but I wouldn't mind a 20M floppy right now.  This drive has been tested
on an Amiga 2000 with a 2091 controller and it DOES work with the Amiga with
no further hacking unless you want to read Amiga formatted disks with it- then
you are going to have to come up with some software to do that (I am sure some
enterprising hacker will do that quickly enough).
However, I certainly wouldn't use it for doing backups- with a 150 Mb hard drive
and soon a 535 Mb hard drive, tape is the only way to go :-)
 

-- 
Skipper Smith                             | skipper@motaus.sps.mot.com
Motorola Technical Training               | 8945 Guilford Rd  Ste 145  
All opinions are my own, not my employers | Columbia, MD 21046