Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!newstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: A590 w/Panasonic 11meg FD
Message-ID: <120148@sun.Eng.Sun.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 89 19:15:52 GMT
References: <89080709104894@masnet.uucp>
Sender: news@sun.Eng.Sun.COM
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 41

In article <89080709104894@masnet.uucp> (MICHAEL HAINSWORTH) writes:
>Hi there! I recently read in a reputable magazine that Panasonic has
>released a 3.5" Metal Floppy Disk drive that will hold up to 11
>megabytes.  I'm curious to know if this drive is available yet (in the
>USA or preferably Canada) and if it can be hooked directly to an Amiga
>590 Hard drive (This is the A500 hard drive from CBM).

InSite Peripherals in San Jose is also beginning to ramp up production
on their 20.8M Floptical Drive. The drive is a 3.5" form factor, SCSI
interfaced drive that takes 3.5" floppies that have one side "optical"
(which is really just a bunch of hard coded servo tracks) and the other
side magnetic. The Drive mechanisims will probably be retailing for 
something like $500 - $600, and the floppies themselves are $100 for
a box of 5 ($1/Meg). They claim they will be in volume production 
next month.

No as for hooking it up. The hookup should be straight forward since
they are SCSI and the SCSI drives out there today all work. There are
two areas that will need further attention. 
	1) Formatting, the first time you use a floptical you will 
	   have to hard format it. That means sending it a hard format
	   command and most scsi drivers don't do that when you use
	   the AmigaDOS format command. ('cuz it's faster to use QUICK)
	   Generally though, people like Cltd and Microbotics have a 
	   utility that will format those puppies by sending the SCSI 
	   command.

	2) The other area is in ejection. FFS in 1.3 doesn't know how to 
	   eject a disk (No DiskChange stuff in the handler) and most
	   scsi drivers just stub out the trackdisk compatible diskchange
	   stuff because the media isn't changeable. 

If Randell or whomever in C/A is responsible for those things has dealt
with those issues then it should be a simple matter of plugging in the
wires. Otherwise, you may have to hack around a bit.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"A most excellent barbarian ... Genghis Kahn!"