Huge, cased floppy disks introduced in 1987?...

[ataridave]

I can't find this video in my favorites, but there's a video of a special computer disk, that was introduced in 1987-these disks were enormus, and in some type of heavy plastic or metal casing. 1987 was the year that they were introduced, but I can't remember a brand or product name.

[Rybags]

There's the Zip Drive but that was 1994.

 

There was also HDD cartridges, from memory even Atari released one for the ST.

 

I don't think general floppies ever went beyond 2.88 Meg (same form-factor as 3.5") - by the late 80s other storage formats were getting cheaper and faster.

There was likely a good number of removable HDD cartridge standards as well.

 

But once CD then later Flash and DVD came along, most of these things became uneconomical and died off.

[ataridave]

I found it, it was the Bernoulli Box! What an COOL piece of retro computing hardware!

[Omega-TI]

I found it, it was the Bernoulli Box! What an COOL piece of retro computing hardware!

 

Yep!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1tEzpYoG-U

[atarian1]

The idea of unlimited storage was a cool concept back then. I bought into it too, but I bought a Syquest unit instead since they seemed more durable and popular than the Bernoulli drives. 44MB per cartridge seemed like so much storage back then.

[Omega-TI]

The idea of unlimited storage was a cool concept back then. I bought into it too, but I bought a Syquest unit instead since they seemed more durable and popular than the Bernoulli drives. 44MB per cartridge seemed like so much storage back then.

 

What blows me away is the size to memory ratio. Now you can get 128GB on a tiny little card for a fraction of the price.

[Keatah]

I was always enamored with the Zip Drive for some inexplicable reason.

[jaybird3rd]

I still have Zip drives in some of my computers. I use them for backups, since I don't trust Flash or writable optical media (at least not exclusively) for long-term storage.

[Keatah]

Zip Disks I wrote to back in the mid 1990's when the drive first came out are still readable today. You know, I'd rather trust my old Xebec / FirstClassPeripherals 10MB Sider HDD than Flash. Data stored on it in 1986 (or earlier) still readable with no refreshing. Once you know how Flash works and how precarious the cells are you'll think that way too.

[jaybird3rd]

My oldest Zip disks are from 1998. I was getting ready to start a new job at a medical company, and they gave me some of their custom applications on 100MB Zip disks so I could get familiar with them (consumer CD-R drives weren't yet commonplace). Those disks still worked the last time I tried them, about three months ago.

 

My longest-lived media by far, though, is my collection of 5.25" Atari 800 diskettes from the mid-80s. I remember filling them with data (BASIC saves, level data, and so forth) around 1983-1986, and most of them are still readable today.

[Seob]

Loved the zip disks for there hugh storage space back then. Considering that the harddisk i had in my pc back then was 240 Mb, 100Mb was a lot of space.

The only fear you had was the click of death.

[atarian1]

I hated Zip Disks. They always felt cheaply built to me like they were going to break soon. My intuition was right as the famous "Click of Death" was real and started popping up everywhere on the internet after a couple years. It still surprises owners today.

 

I'm glad I stuck with my Syquest drives which still work to this day. It's too bad Iomega drove Syquest out of business due to cheaply priced and built products.

[RobertLM78]

I hated Zip Disks. They always felt cheaply built to me like they were going to break soon. My intuition was right as the famous "Click of Death" was real and started popping up everywhere on the internet after a couple years. It still surprises owners today.

 

I'm glad I stuck with my Syquest drives which still work to this day. It's too bad Iomega drove Syquest out of business due to cheaply priced and built products.

 

I didn't have the pleasure of owning a Syquest drive, but I had a Zip drive and they did feel cheap to me, too. The Zip drive died in 2006; it was probably only 3-4 years old at that point.

[Seob]

The first generation of zipdrives where build with higher quality. The later products are more prone to failure. Haven't had any problems with my disks last time i checked them 3/4 year ago.

[Keatah]

In 2006 the Zip Drive would've been 12 years old. Mine was working fine at that time.

 

I hated Zip Disks. They always felt cheaply built to me like they were going to break soon. My intuition was right as the famous "Click of Death" was real and started popping up everywhere on the internet after a couple years. It still surprises owners today.

 

I'm glad I stuck with my Syquest drives which still work to this day. It's too bad Iomega drove Syquest out of business due to cheaply priced and built products.

 

It's the consumer that buys cheap products and thus encourages corporations to produce cheap products. Not to say corps don't instigate the race to the bottom.

[Charlie_]

 

Yep!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1tEzpYoG-U

 

That is a great device. So is the XT in that video. Good stuff.

[Seob]

Here is a nice review of the bernoulli drive. http://youtu.be/TpqiahBKX7w

[RobertLM78]

"Wikipedia"

 

The drive spins a PET film floppy disk at about 3000 rpm, 1 µm over a read-write head, using Bernoulli's principle to pull the flexible disk towards the head as long as the disk is spinning. In theory this makes the Bernoulli drive more reliable than a contemporary hard disk drive, since a head crash is impossible.

If this Bernoulli system was so reliable, I wonder why it fell out of favour - even their own later drives lacked the technology.

[fandenivoldsk]

The first generation of zipdrives where build with higher quality. The later products are more prone to failure. Haven't had any problems with my disks last time i checked them 3/4 year ago.

 

I am thinking about buying one. How do I tell it is a first generataion drive?

[Keatah]

If this Bernoulli system was so reliable, I wonder why it fell out of favour - even their own later drives lacked the technology.

 

In theory is the key word. Mfg technology doesn't always have the ability to machine the parts to the precision necessary to allow that theory to play out. Engineering found a better and easier way to allow the heads to fly closer to the surface - like in today's modern HDD. And for the past 10 years the modern HDD has sported adjustable fly height too. Something not in BB's plan.

 

And then you have advertisements. You know marketing is keen to tout whatever bullshit just to make a sale, the good, the bad, the ugly.. To marketing departments it's all the same.

 

All that said and done, it was interesting for its time.

[Seob]

 

I am thinking about buying one. How do I tell it is a first generataion drive?

really don't know, maybe the manufacture date. If i'm correct the scsi drives came out first, then the parallel version and last the internal one.

[Bruce Tomlin]

This pic is much more interesting than just a 128GB card by itself.

 

I think SD/MMC started out at 32MB, but there might have been smaller sizes. MMC was introduced in 1997.

[Shawn]

This pic is much more interesting than just a 128GB card by itself.

 

I think SD/MMC started out at 32MB, but there might have been smaller sizes. MMC was introduced in 1997.

 

And here is hoping it's measured in TB in the picture taken in another few years.

[Keatah]

How many VCS cartridges can that hold?

[Rybags]

Probably every one ever made, plus the source code, plus a video preview.

 

Assume 5,000 games @ average 6K ROM size = 30 Meg ROMs +

assume 15 * ROM size for reasonably commented source = 450 Meg for source +

assume 10 Meg per game for a short preview video = 50 Gig.

 

Double all that allowing for both PAL/NSTC versions: fits on a 128 Gig card with space to spare.