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From: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Mini-CD revisited...
Message-ID: <00949496.8242D3C0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU>
Date: 28 May 91 21:04:30 GMT
Sender: news@eng.umd.edu (C-News)
Reply-To: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU (Doug Mohney)
Organization: The U. of MD, CP, CAD lab
Lines: 24

Bill Clark was kind enough to mail me more info about the Mini-CD format which
Sony is working on. Apparently, the disk is about 2.5" inches in diameter
(smaller than a shirt-pocket 3 1/2") and can hold 175MB. 

Has anyone (can anyone?) admit to seeing one of these things as a data storage
product to be integrated with a PC and/or a laptop? Since the audio player uses
1 Mbit of RAM to buffer the compression of a 2.5 audio disk (compression scheme
uses some funky tricks to get roughly 5:1 ratio, total of 74 minutes of playing
time), and probably a couple of chips to do data compression, the actual 175Mb
record/play mechanism is prob'ly pretty compact. 

Hook this sucker up to a RISCy chip either on desktop or on a laptop
(Porta-snake anyone) and you're cooking. I think 2" hard disks in laptops are
projected to be 100-120MB come next year, so you have some interesting
tradeoffs. Or a built-in backup/storage device and a hard disk. 

Sony claims the media and hardware is cheaper (!) than DAT (DAT being reserved
for pureist audiophiles :-).

What ever happend to Tandy's THOR read/write CD-ROM technology?


     Signature envy: quality of some people to put 24+ lines in their .sigs
  -- >                  SYSMGR@CADLAB.ENG.UMD.EDU                        < --