media question (MO and tape)

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Thu Aug 7 10:29:00 2003

Rumor has it that liste_at_artware.qc.ca may have mentioned these words:
>My father was emptying his office and broght home a box full of back ups.
>I have readers for most, except the following 2 :
>
>Sony 5 1/4 Magneto Optical Disk EDM-1DA1s Rewritable
>[snip]
>I've googled around a bit and disovered very little about these medias
>beyond the fact the MO disks can contain 600mb.

There's two types of MO disks that are in the 600Mb range - 600Mb (300Mb
per side, which IIRC are 512bytes/sector) and 650Mb (1024bytes/sector).
AFAIK, these disks are not interchangeable. I have a MaxOptix Tahiti 1
drive, which reads either the 600Mb disks, or Maxtor came out with their
own 512byte/sector disks, that put more sectors on each track as there was
room. I received 3 disks when I got it - one 1G platter (500Mb per side),
and 2 600Mb platters, however, the 1G platter would *never* format
correctly; methinks that the platter was just b0rked. It read/wrote the 2
600Mb platters just fine, tho...

I still have the drive; altho my main SCSI system is out-of-state right
now; prolly until the beginning of next week.

>Question : what drives would be able to read these media? Would they be
>easily procurable for cheap?

For stuff like this - Ebay would prolly be your best bet. Make sure, tho,
that you get the right drive for the right MO disk you have; you can prolly
get them pretty cheap nowadays tho.

>-Philip

HTH,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch_at_30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????
Received on Thu Aug 07 2003 - 10:29:00 BST

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