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Non-Tech : Any info about Iomega (IOM)? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dale Stempson who wrote (37864)	11/30/1997 12:56:00 PM
From: Teddy	Respond to of 58324

OT i just did something silly: i just spent over one hour looking for my first post on SI. It was on the old "Civil Thread", this thread was wild back then. Here it is: Message 995066 And here is Dale's Civil reply: Message 995953 Thanks Dale for the sound advice.

To: Dale Stempson who wrote (37864)	11/30/1997 4:49:00 PM
From: Frank Drumond	Respond to of 58324

>I am not aware of the dual connectors you mentioned. I would imagine that Sony will be manufacturing various drive configurations.< It is possible that they could try to use dual connectors as an attempt to save expense or to simplify initial product development. For the drive to have backwards read of a floppy this means that you need a floppy controller to encode the data in addition you need the high speed interface ala IDE to handle the 200 MB disks. So they have two choices: 1) Provide a standard floppy connector so that the PCs standard floppy controller can encode the data with the help of the standard floppy drivers. 2) Put a floppy controller on the drive and then use the on-board processor and firmware to handle the floppy data. Option 1 adds the expense of a second connector and causes packaging problems. Not to mention an installation pain (imagine cramming TWO connectors on the back of a 3.5" drive. Option 2 is the route that Imation took and results in a much more complex drive in terms of firmware and additional electronics. Given these obvious cost adders I have not discussed the worst problem. The head. Floppies use contact recording, meaning the head touches the media, which is why the wear out so fast. The Imation drive is so slow because they do contact recording for their 120 MB mode. Sony must fly the head ( a second head ) for the 200 MB mode given that they are spinning the disk pretty fast. Two heads with two different postioning techniques is not cheap. Given all of the above Sony is blowing smoke when they talk about pricing equivalent to current floppies. My take on this is Sony and Fuji are trying their best to leverage a better licensing deal from Iomega by pitching the HiFD.