HP floptical summary

From: Susan R Hertz (hertz@cs.cornell.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 18 1994 - 14:30:02 CST


Here's a summary of information we've gathered from responses to our
post of 31 Jan on the Hewlett-Packard optical disk drive.

People have had good experiences with the unit itself.

You need to buy driver software for SunOS 4.x or Solaris 2 if you want
to put filesystems on it, rather than just writing straight to it like
a tape device. The driver also typically has some other benefits, like
preventing you from removing a disk while it's being written to, a
graphical interface, etc.

The figure of 1.3 Gb per disk is somewhat misleading; you get 650 Mb
per side unformatted, and slightly less after formatting. You must
also manually flip the disk over in order to change sides.

$2,900 was the rock bottom price we found for the drive plus driver
software. The disks were $105 each when purchased with the drive,
slightly more thereafter.

I hope this is useful to others. Thanks to all who responded.

Sue Hertz
hertz@cs.cornell.edu



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