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Article: Is the floppy drive about to retire? (new LS-120 130MB standard is backward-compatible with floppy disks; Mitsuimi, Swan Instruments developing new, simpler design) (Technology Information)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Macworld
- Article date:
- January 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Mac Publishing. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Despite its low capacity and sluggish performance, the floppy disk drive has persisted because it is cheap and ubiquitous. Iomega's 100MB Zip drive can't replace the floppy because it can't read floppy disks. The LS-120 floppy drive jointly developed by Matsushita, 3M, and Compaq does read and write to standard floppies as well as to its own 120MB disks, but its laser-guided mechanism is expensive to build, especially in a thin package.
New Contender
But now there's a new (yet to be named) floppy drive being developed by Swan Instruments and Mitsumi that uses high-density 130MB disks--and it looks to be a better prospect than either the Zip or the LS-120 for ...