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Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!ima!johnl
From: johnl@ima.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: IBM WORM disk
Message-ID: <554@ima.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Apr-87 14:47:50 EST
Article-I.D.: ima.554
Posted: Thu Apr 23 14:47:50 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Apr-87 03:44:45 EST
References: <39@sdeggo.UUCP>
Reply-To: johnl@ima.UUCP (John R. Levine)
Organization: Javelin Software Corporation
Lines: 22
Summary: works fine, but expensive

In article <39@sdeggo.UUCP> dave@sdeggo.UUCP (David L. Smith) writes:
>I see that IBM is "introducing" a WORM optical disk.  According to the ad,
>capacity is 200M.  Looks like a neat toy.  Does anyone know if it's 
>available yet, what the price is and if it's compatible with the PC?

I looked at it at the opening extravaganza in Miami.  There is a controller
for the existing PC bus -- there has to be because the PS/2 30 has the old
bus.  It's expensive, though.  The list price is $2950.  Cartridges are $65
apiece.  It's supposed to be available "soon."

I'm surprised that nobody has asked yet how they got DOS to talk to a 200MB
disk, since DOS 3.3 does not change the 32MB limit for a disk volume.  I asked,
and it turns out that the driver for the WORM disk hooks into DOS as a network
driver, not a disk driver.  It makes sense -- DOS can hardly rewrite its FATs
on a write-once disk.  The driver is optimized for writing whole files, but
will do the necessary backflips to allow you to rewrite files in pieces.  It
remembers everything ever put on the disk, since it's WORM, and there is a
utility to go back to a superseded version of a file.
-- 
John R. Levine, Javelin Software Corp., Cambridge MA +1 617 494 1400
{ ihnp4 | decvax | cbosgd | harvard | yale }!ima!johnl, Levine@YALE.something
Where is Richard Nixon now that we need him?