I'm curious, Eric. I have a Sony MD-Data disk drive, and actually
considered using them for certain applications. It uses a SCSI
interface. I can't remember Sony ever predicting them to replace the
floppy. Do you happen to have any references that you can direct me to
that states that?
I never heard of a version of that drive that used IDE or floppy type
interfaces. Were there?
Thanks.
Eric Smith wrote:
>>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.
>
> .
>
--
Dave Mabry dmabry_at_mich.com
Dossin Museum Underwater Research Team
NACD #2093
Received on Tue Feb 11 2003 - 13:27:00 GMT