MO drives...

From: Mark <mark_k_at_totalise.co.uk>
Date: Sat Aug 4 14:04:44 2001

Hi,

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001 Roger Merchberger wrote:
> I'd love to find one (or a few) of the 3.5" 128Meg (or 256Meg) drives for
> my classic computing needs - great archival capabilities, and with
> 8-bitters, you don't really worry much about the speed...

Both SCSI and IDE models are on eBay all the time. Used 128MB and 230MB drives
(compatible with 128MB disks) usually go for $10-$30. New media is also cheap;
128MB & 230MB disks cost about ?2.20 each (+VAT) in the UK. They certainly
make way more sense than buying a Zip drive.


You probably didn't mean to write 256MB. There are two types of 256MB MO
drives, neither of which is very common. Canon made the NeXT MO drive as well
as a standalone model (which does not seem to be compatible with NeXT disks).
They use 5.25" disks with 256MB per side.

MOST (Mass Optical Storage Technologies, now out of business) used to make
3.5" MO drives. The RMD-5100-S used 128MB disks. The RMD-5200-S could also
use 256MB disks, which as far as I know were only sold by MOST. The
RMD-5300-S could use 128MB, 256MB and 384MB disks. 384MB disks are covered by
an ECMA standard, but as with the 256MB ones only MOST made them.

I have RMD-5200-S and RMD-5300-S drives, bought mainly out of curiosity. IF
ANYONE HAS JUMPER SETTING INFO FOR THESE, PLEASE CONTACT ME! I would also like
to get hold of technical manuals for these drives.


> The only thing you have to watch for with the 5.25" drives is sector size.
> The 600Meg platters are 512-byte sectors, IIRC the 650Meg platters are
> 2048-byte sectors [[but don't quote me]]...

Nope, 650MB disks have 1024-byte sectors.


> 650Meg disks will *not* work in a 600Meg drive,

They work fine. The main reason for having two disks with slightly different
capacities is that some computers/OSes only work with media that has 512-byte
sectors. If you have 650MB disks which won't work in a "600MB" drive, it's
probably a software problem.


> but thankfully my MaxOptics takes it's "special" 1G disks, but also
> reads/writes to the 600Meg disks. (which is good, because the 1G disk seemed
> to be bad. It wouldn't format without a *lot* of bad sectors.)

Did you try cleaning the surface of the disk? That can help for disks which
have been heavily used, and so have become dusty/dirty.


-- Mark
Received on Sat Aug 04 2001 - 14:04:44 BST