was: Re: VHS Tapes as storage.

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Tue Feb 11 13:08:00 2003

> similiar question goes for mini-discs, were there any efforts anytime to
> use 140mb (?) minidisc as an external storage?

Sony sold "MD-Data" drives. Sony claimed that it would replace
floppy discs. (Amazing how many things were predicted to do that yet
didn't.) The drives were very pricey, which of course prevented
widespread adoption. I can only imagine that some brilliant person
in Sony's marketing department must have been thinking "we can push
these as a floppy drive replacement, sell them to OEMs to be put in
every PC, and make $150 on each unit".

Anyhow, you were probably asking about trying to record data on an
audio MD recorder, perhaps by using the optical digital input. Although
it's sort of possible, the problem is the lossy audio compression. You'd
have to come up with a way to encode the data such that it has audio
characteristics that will pass through the encoder. Of course, the
exact operation of the coder (ATRAC?) is a trade secret of Sony, so
this will be difficult. By the time all's said and done, I doubt that
you could get more than about 20 MB on the disc in this manner, and it
would take over an hour to record that.
Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 13:08:00 GMT