Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@csri.toronto.edu (Tim Horton)
Subject: Disk transfer speed (was Re: Some Answers, straight from NeXT)
Message-ID: <8810250344.AA02429@esplanade.csri.toronto.edu>
Reply-To: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu
Organization: University of Toronto, Dept Computer Science
References: <938@ccnysci.UUCP>
Distribution: na
Date: Mon, 24 Oct 88 23:44:47 EDT

alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>The Optical drive is a true read-write drive...
>The SCSI controller is a next-generation (no kidding...) chip which support 4.8
>MBYTES/sec. (can you say mainframe channel speeds?)  Of course, I don't think
>you can get a SCSI drive which transfers this fast, but that will change...

Are you sure that's not 4.8M-BITS/second?   From what I understand of the
technology, if they are using a single laser the upper limit on reliable
data transfer is 5Mbits a second, or was so just a few months ago (ref:
IEEE Spectrum, early this year?).

X many BITS per second would be an order of magnitude slower than BYTES;
so it may not be that blindingly fast, though I do like the technology.