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poltr1Several years ago, I was reading InfoWorld or Computerworld or a similar computer newspaper or magazine, and I read about a consortium of companies that was working to produce a 120-megabyte floppy disk. The drives would be backward compatible with existing floppies, but it added a laser servo mechanism to read higher-density disks. I followed this technology for a few years before it finally came out. The resulting technology was called LS-120, which Imation branded "SuperDisk".
The problem was, Iomega beat them to market with the 100 Mb Zip disks and drives, by about a year or two. And so, LS-120 tried to play catch-up....and lost.
Almost no one uses either technology now, as they have been superceded and obsoleted by USB-based flash memory drives.
But there are still niche markets for these items. And I think they're still useful. Some high-end keyboards, like my coveted Kurzweil K2500 synth workstation, have a floppy disk on-board, with kits available to replace them with Zip drives. I'd love to install an LS-120 drive in place of the floppy. I can then store lots of patches and MIDI files and whatever else on the SuperDisks instead of lots of floppies.
And so, last month, one of my colleagues from the old DECUS LUG gave me a stack of old LS-120 disks. I also asked on the local Freecycle list, and had a few folks offer me disks. And I bought a LS-120 drive mocule for my laptop, and an LS-120 external drive on EBay.
So now I have about 20 LS-120 disks. Maybe I'll use them. Maybe I won't. But it's nice to finally have them in my possession.
The problem was, Iomega beat them to market with the 100 Mb Zip disks and drives, by about a year or two. And so, LS-120 tried to play catch-up....and lost.
Almost no one uses either technology now, as they have been superceded and obsoleted by USB-based flash memory drives.
But there are still niche markets for these items. And I think they're still useful. Some high-end keyboards, like my coveted Kurzweil K2500 synth workstation, have a floppy disk on-board, with kits available to replace them with Zip drives. I'd love to install an LS-120 drive in place of the floppy. I can then store lots of patches and MIDI files and whatever else on the SuperDisks instead of lots of floppies.
And so, last month, one of my colleagues from the old DECUS LUG gave me a stack of old LS-120 disks. I also asked on the local Freecycle list, and had a few folks offer me disks. And I bought a LS-120 drive mocule for my laptop, and an LS-120 external drive on EBay.
So now I have about 20 LS-120 disks. Maybe I'll use them. Maybe I won't. But it's nice to finally have them in my possession.
