Re: Floptical Drives?

[toddpw@cco.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

caroon@seq.uncwil.edu (Craig Caroon) writes:

>1) is it a good idea?

That depends on your situation. If you don't already have an HD floppy like
the SuperDrive, then a floptical becomes pretty cost-effective assuming you
have a _use_ for it as an HD floppy mechanism. Other than that, it's a low-
cost ($1/meg) low-capacity (compared to syquest and MO drives) solution for
backups and aggregate storage (i.e. I have lots of GIFs on floptical disks,
as well as backups of my HD partitions).

The MO (Magneto-Optical) units are gaining momentum, though. These are 128mb
disks with the same external form factor as normal 3.5's (including flopticals)
and they have been ISO standardized whereas the floptical technology is owned
and licensed to people by Insite Peripherals. There is no question in my mind
that as the MO drives come down in price they will outrun the flopticals. But
the floptical's HD floppy capability is just what I needed, and the starting
cost is about half that of an MO unit, so I invested in a floptical for the
next N years. Later on I will probably get an MO (or whatever comes along to
beat _it_), but not until I actually need that kind of storage and it is much
cheaper. (The 128mb media already is, per megabyte at least, but the starting
cost difference is the determining factor for most people.)

>2) I know of two from incider that advertise that they will work on
>   an apple IIGS, the AE floptical and the Tulin.  Tulin's drive is
>   cheaper and AE's has an eject button.  Is that basically the only
>   difference? And also will either of these drive ACTUALLY work on
>   a IIGS? Any special drivers required or will the Apple SCSI driver
>   do just fine....?

I have a Tulin drive that has an eject button on it. The eject mechanism
probably adds to the cost. Both drives should work fine. The Apple SCSI
driver _cannot_ talk to the flopticals, you will need either Tulin's driver
or the RJB.Freeware driver.

>3) What type of SCSI card should I get?  RAMFast is the Best, correct?
>   Is ther much difference in speed between the RAMfast 256k and the
>   RAMFast 1mb?  For that Matter is there much differce in speed B/W
>   the RAMFast and the Apple SCSI card?

I have a 256K RamFast. Haven't tried it with the others so I wouldn't know.

>4) I dont know much about SCSI devices so bare with me; Is it possible
>   to chain other devices..ie a Hard DRive off of the floptical drive?

If it has a second SCSI connector in the back lot most SCSI devices then
yes you can. My Tulin drive does, but I make it the last device anyway so I
can use its internal terminators instead of an external terminator block.
I chain the floptical off of the Hard Drive.

>5) Any other info. is welcomed.  Anyone who actually has one on their 
>   IIGS, please tell me how you like it...

Now that I have a non-beta RamFast ROM for it, I love it.

>6) Do these drives read and write optically or do they just track optically?

Flopticals just track optically. MO's actually read and write optically.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu