SCSI Floppy Disk Drive

[kuk]

Link



<< Winstation Systems Corporation, today announced OEM availability of the Winstation ``HYDRA'' SCSI Floppy Disk Drive.

At 32 mm or 25.4 mm in height, the Winstation drive uses standard 1.44 mb diskettes while incorporating the SCSI interface for use in a multitude of industry applications that require the advanced technology. The Winstation SCSI Floppy Disk Drive provides the OEM with FDD capability without having to incorporate a separate FDD port into their imbedded architecture.

``The Winstation SCSI FDD is perfect for the imbedded server market which is migrating towards more space saving footprints,'' said Jill Colee, Marketing Vice President at Winstation Systems. Colee continues, ``It makes economic sense not having to incorporate costly and useless interfaces such as the FDD when all storage can be handled with one interface. This technology opens the door for hundreds of OEM and Industrial applications that otherwise would have had to imbed two interfaces when the more superior SCSI technology can be incorporated for all rotating media.''

``Winstation's Technology and long running understanding of the Data Storage Industry has enabled us to create a superior and reliable product for the OEM channel,'' said Russell J. Horn, C.E.O. of Winstation Systems. ``We are very excited to offer the Winstation drive to the customer, this truly gives the O.E.M. a competitive choice, in the past one did not exist.''

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Hmpf ... that could be a serious bandwith hogger

 

[JACKHAMMER]

Finally, something SCSI that I could probably afford =P

 

[Gunbuster]

Wow so you can save the cost of a $15 floppy con. chip and cable plus a $10 FDD (that you can get replacements for at wallyworld) and instead go for a SCSI cable with a extra port and a SCSI FDD made by only 1 company.

Anyone want to guess the price?

Who still uses floppys anyway

 

[ERJ]

Kinda makes sense, for some people I guess.....

Here are some pics if anyone is interested:

SCSI Floppy Pics

ERJ

 

[Wah]

that is retarded.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

Hey, saves an IRQ and your computer doesn't lock up during flopppy accesses...

 

[thermite88]

The Silicon Graphic and Sun workstations have had SCSI floppy disk drive as long as I can remember. What is new about this product?

If it costs $15 like the other PC floppy drive, instead of the $200 or so cost of the workstation floppy drive, it will be news worthy.

 

[beat mania]

I remember back in the old DOS day. A scsi card's driver was shipped on cd. except that the cdrom was a scsi cdrom. circular dependence is dumb. I had to have someone copy that driver on floppy for me.

Now it won't even work cuz the floppy is scsi. How are they gonna get the driver on the computer?

 

[Buddha Bart]

makes perfect sense for a small footprint server

frankly if FDD's were a person, i would kick his ass and bury him alive.

bart

 

[Pulsifer]

Here's the prices: SCSI Floppy

 

[Vegito]

kinda suck when the drivers you need to load scsi is on a floppy if you're stuck somewhere with a 150.00 drive. But it is a good idea if computers can recognize scsi w/o drivers...

 

[thorin]

What if it runs out of bandwidth

Thorin

(In case you missed it, I was joking)

 

[LogicalOne]

After a little bit of digging, I noticed that Iomega owns the rights to the Insite floptical drive that was used in SGI boxes during the early 90's. This is a 50-pin SCSI device that also uses 21mb optical media (nearly impossible to find). The drive can be had from several places on the net and I have seen it for as little as 125 with very little looking. This is cheaper than the newly released drive and is technology that has been in existence for over 8 years now. Why has no one mentioned this alternative yet?

 

[CQuinn]

I agree with Wah that this is retarded, but for a different reason.

LogicalOne, IIRC the Iomega Floptical was a flop because it was more
expensive (back then) than it was worth, it was little faster than a
regular floppy drive, and there were some technical issues that made
it hard to support. You haven't heard of it from Iomega becuase they
have tried to bury it under zip-drive and Jaz-drive hype, which are
non-compatible but slightly better technologies than the early floptical
designs. You have heard of &quot;some&quot; of the floptical technology that was
used as the basis for ideas like the LS-120 superdrive.

Which is why I think Winstation has missed the point with this product,
they should have at least tried to make it a SCSI superdrive, or used
one of the other floppy-compatible higher storage mediums.

 

[Rado]

&quot;Why has no one mentioned this alternative yet?&quot;

Because no one ventures around to read the news. This IS NOT something new. Tough!

 

[thermite88]

If you are interested in a SCSI floppy drive, why not buy a SCSI LS-120 superfloppy. It is only $95 MSRP and $69 from this source:

http://www.alancomputech.com/mitscsi12sup.html

It is less than 1/3 of the HYDRA SCSI floppy. Does it make more sense?

 

[andrey]

and how fast can little 1.44&quot; floppy disk spin?

btw, as an idea, how about Ultra160 SCSI as the next step? That will kick some butt !