Re: Are flopticals compatible with those mini cd's?

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

herbertf@ersys.edmonton.ab.ca (Herbert Fung) writes:

>I was reading the paper the other day about Sony's new mini cd
>players. These cd players could record and playback these little
>optical disks in a cartidge case that look similar to some floptical
>disks. Could these disks be played on a floptical drive?

Nope. The floptical (i.e. 21mb) disks start with normal high density magnetic
media and engrave really precise optical guide tracks on the platter. This lets
a modified magnetic head with an optical tracking system achieve a much higher
track density than a normal magnetic drive (with mechanical tracking).

Magneto-Opticals (which to me means anything like NeXT disks or the ones you're
talking about) use a different mechanism that yields even higher density (like
128 mb and up) and reliability but does not allow backwards compatibility with
older floppies in the same mechanism, like the floptical does.

The Magneto-Opticals are definitely the long-term solution, but they are still
too new a technology, and Insite correctly positioned their floptical system
as a transition technology -- which is exactly what I needed, and that's why I
bought one.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ cco.caltech.edu