Floptical
Encyclopedia
Floptical refers to a type of disk drive that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store large amounts of data on media similar to 3½-inch floppy disk
s. The name is a portmanteau of the words 'floppy' and 'optical'. It refers specifically to one brand of drive, but is also used more generically to refer to any system using similar techniques.
The original Floptical technology was introduced late in 1991 by Insite Peripherals, a venture funded
company set up by Jim Adkisson, one of the key engineers behind the original 5¼-inch floppy disk drive development at Shugart Associates
in 1976. The main shareholders were Maxell
, Iomega
and 3M
.
of storage. The drive had a second set of read/write heads so that it could read from and write to standard 720 kB
and 1.44 MB
(1,440 KiB
) disks as well.
To allow for a high degree of compatibility with existing SCSI
host adapters, Floptical drives were designed to work as a floppy, and not as a removable hard disk
. To ensure this, a "write lockout" feature was added in the firmware
. This effectively inhibited writing (including any kind of formatting
) of the media. It was possible to unlock the drive by issuing a SCSI Mode Sense Command
, 1A 00 20 02 A0. It is unclear how much of a problem this was, and Insite also issued EPROM
s where this "feature" was not present.
At least two models were produced, one with a manual lever that mechanically ejected the disc from the drive, and another with a small pinhole into which a paperclip could be inserted, in case the device rejected or ignored SCSI
eject commands.
, Maxell/Hitachi and others. A number of these companies later formed the Floptical Technology Association, or FTA, to try to have the format adopted as a floppy replacement.
Around 70,000 Insite flopticals are believed to have been sold worldwide in the product’s lifetime. Silicon Graphics
used them in their SGI Indigo
and SGI Indy
series of computer workstations. It was also reported that Commodore International
had selected the Insite Floptical for its Amiga 3000
. However this did not take place, and while Flopticals were installed in many Amiga systems, they were sold by either Insite, TTR Development or Digital Micronics (DMI), and not bundled by Commodore
.
The product had lingering quality and reliability issues, and was generally much slower than other technologies such as the Iomega ZIP. In fact, while Iomega licensed the floptical technology as early as 1989 and produced a compatible drive known as the Insider, they later dropped it to focus on the ZIP system. ZIP would go on to sell into the tens of millions.
A number of other companies also introduced non-compatible floptical-like systems. Most popular of these, by far, was the Imation
LS-120 SuperDisk. The LS-120 stored 120 MB of data while retaining the ability to work with normal 3½-inch disks, interfacing as a standard floppy for better compatibility. There was serious consideration that the LS-120 would succeed where the Floptical failed and replace the floppy disk outright, but the rapid introduction of writable CD-ROM
systems in the early 2000s made the market disappear. Sony
also tried their own floptical-based format, the Sony HiFD
, but quality control problems ruined its reputation. A smaller competitor is the almost unknown Caleb UHD144
.
operating systems up to Windows 2000
, where it figures as 20.8 MB drive format option in the FORMAT command options. The FORMAT command in Windows XP
and newer Windows OSes lacks support of the Floptical drive. Floptical support exists in SCO OpenServer as well. SCSI
-equipped Macintosh
computers could boot from a Mac operating system installed on a floptical; a formatting utility application was provided to erase and format floptical disks.
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
s. The name is a portmanteau of the words 'floppy' and 'optical'. It refers specifically to one brand of drive, but is also used more generically to refer to any system using similar techniques.
The original Floptical technology was introduced late in 1991 by Insite Peripherals, a venture funded
Venture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
company set up by Jim Adkisson, one of the key engineers behind the original 5¼-inch floppy disk drive development at Shugart Associates
Shugart Associates
Shugart Associates was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the 5¼-inch minifloppy disk drive....
in 1976. The main shareholders were Maxell
Maxell
, commonly known as Maxell, is a Japanese company which manufactures consumer electronics. The company's notable products are batteries -- the company's name is a contraction of "maximum capacity dry cell" -- and recording media, including audio cassettes and blank VHS tapes, and recordable optical...
, Iomega
Iomega
Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...
and 3M
3M
3M Company , formerly known as the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation based in Maplewood, Minnesota, United States....
.
Technical aspects
The technology involved reading and writing data magnetically, while optically aligning the read/write head in the drive using grooves in the disc being sensed by an infra-red LED. The magnetic head touches the recording surface, as it does in a normal floppy drive. The optical servo tracks allowed for an increase in the tracking precision of the magnetic head, from the usual 135 tracks per inch to 1,250 tracks per inch. Floptical disks provided 21 MBMegabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of storage. The drive had a second set of read/write heads so that it could read from and write to standard 720 kB
Kilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
and 1.44 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
(1,440 KiB
Kibibyte
The kibibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for quantities of digital information. The binary prefix kibi means 1024; therefore, 1 kibibyte is . The unit symbol for the kibibyte is KiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1999 and has been accepted for use...
) disks as well.
To allow for a high degree of compatibility with existing SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
host adapters, Floptical drives were designed to work as a floppy, and not as a removable hard disk
Hard disk
A hard disk drive is a non-volatile, random access digital magnetic data storage device. It features rotating rigid platters on a motor-driven spindle within a protective enclosure. Data is magnetically read from and written to the platter by read/write heads that float on a film of air above the...
. To ensure this, a "write lockout" feature was added in the firmware
Firmware
In electronic systems and computing, firmware is a term often used to denote the fixed, usually rather small, programs and/or data structures that internally control various electronic devices...
. This effectively inhibited writing (including any kind of formatting
Disk formatting
Disk formatting is the process of preparing a hard disk drive or flexible disk medium for data storage. In some cases, the formatting operation may also create one or more new file systems...
) of the media. It was possible to unlock the drive by issuing a SCSI Mode Sense Command
SCSI Mode Sense Command
The SCSI Mode Sense command is used to obtain current device information from mode pages in a SCSI target device. There are two different versions of the command, a 6 byte version and a 10 byte version.The CDB structure for the Mode Sense command is:...
, 1A 00 20 02 A0. It is unclear how much of a problem this was, and Insite also issued EPROM
EPROM
An EPROM , or erasable programmable read only memory, is a type of memory chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. In other words, it is non-volatile. It is an array of floating-gate transistors individually programmed by an electronic device that supplies higher voltages...
s where this "feature" was not present.
At least two models were produced, one with a manual lever that mechanically ejected the disc from the drive, and another with a small pinhole into which a paperclip could be inserted, in case the device rejected or ignored SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
eject commands.
Technical specifications
| Unformatted | 25 MiB Mebibyte The mebibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The binary prefix mebi means 220, therefore 1 mebibyte is . The unit symbol for the mebibyte is MiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 2000 and has been accepted for use by all major... |
| Formatted | 20,385 KiB Kibibyte The kibibyte is a multiple of the unit byte for quantities of digital information. The binary prefix kibi means 1024; therefore, 1 kibibyte is . The unit symbol for the kibibyte is KiB. The unit was established by the International Electrotechnical Commission in 1999 and has been accepted for use... |
| Rotational speed Rotational speed Rotational speed tells how many complete rotations there are per time unit. It is therefore a cyclic frequency, measured in hertz in the SI System... |
720 RPM Revolutions per minute Revolutions per minute is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis... |
| Track density | 1250 TPI Tracks per inch Tracks per inch is a measure of magnetic resolution, in particular the number of individual tracks a floppy disk controller can use within a linear one-inch space.* 48 tpi* 96/100 tpi... |
| Recording density | 23980 BPI (RLL Run Length Limited Run length limited or RLL coding is a line coding technique that is used to send arbitrary data over a communications channel with bandwidth limits. This is used in both telecommunication and storage systems which move a medium past a fixed head. Specifically, RLL bounds the length of stretches ... ) |
| Transfer from disk | 1.6 Mbit/s |
| Buffer transfer rate | 2 MB/s |
| Average seek time | 65 ms Millisecond A millisecond is a thousandth of a second.10 milliseconds are called a centisecond.... |
| Settle time | 15 ms |
| Motor start time | 750 ms |
| No. of heads | 2 |
| Cylinders | 755 |
| Sectors per track | 27 |
| Sector size | 256, 512, or 1024 byte Byte The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer... s (set at format time) |
| Interface | SCSI SCSI Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it... |
Market performance
Insite licensed the floptical technology to a number of companies, including Matsushita, IomegaIomega
Iomega is an American producer of consumer external, portable and networking storage hardware. Established in the 1980s, Iomega has sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks. On April 8, 2008, EMC Corporation announced its plans to acquire Iomega for a consideration of US $213M...
, Maxell/Hitachi and others. A number of these companies later formed the Floptical Technology Association, or FTA, to try to have the format adopted as a floppy replacement.
Around 70,000 Insite flopticals are believed to have been sold worldwide in the product’s lifetime. Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
used them in their SGI Indigo
SGI Indigo
The Indigo, introduced as the IRIS Indigo, was a line of workstation computers developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics, Inc. . The first Indigo, code-named "Hollywood", was introduced on 22 July 1991...
and SGI Indy
SGI Indy
The Indy, code-named "Guinness", is a low-end workstation introduced on 12 July 1993. Developed and manufactured by Silicon Graphics Incorporated , it was the result of their attempt to obtain a share of the low-end computer-aided design market, which was dominated at the time by other workstation...
series of computer workstations. It was also reported that Commodore International
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
had selected the Insite Floptical for its Amiga 3000
Amiga 3000
The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, was the third major release in the Amiga computer family. Released in June 1990, it features improved processing speed, improved rendering of graphics, and a new revision of the operating system...
. However this did not take place, and while Flopticals were installed in many Amiga systems, they were sold by either Insite, TTR Development or Digital Micronics (DMI), and not bundled by Commodore
Commodore International
Commodore is the commonly used name for Commodore Business Machines , the U.S.-based home computer manufacturer and electronics manufacturer headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, which also housed Commodore's corporate parent company, Commodore International Limited...
.
The product had lingering quality and reliability issues, and was generally much slower than other technologies such as the Iomega ZIP. In fact, while Iomega licensed the floptical technology as early as 1989 and produced a compatible drive known as the Insider, they later dropped it to focus on the ZIP system. ZIP would go on to sell into the tens of millions.
A number of other companies also introduced non-compatible floptical-like systems. Most popular of these, by far, was the Imation
Imation
Imation is a US based multi-national technology corporation that designs, manufactures and sells recordable data storage media, consumer electronics products and accessories.The company is a 1996 spin off of 3M and is headquartered in Oakdale, Minnesota...
LS-120 SuperDisk. The LS-120 stored 120 MB of data while retaining the ability to work with normal 3½-inch disks, interfacing as a standard floppy for better compatibility. There was serious consideration that the LS-120 would succeed where the Floptical failed and replace the floppy disk outright, but the rapid introduction of writable CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
systems in the early 2000s made the market disappear. Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
also tried their own floptical-based format, the Sony HiFD
Sony HiFD
The Sony HiFD was an attempt by Sony to replace their own aging 3.5 inch floppy disk, which had proven successful in the late-1980s war to replace the 5.25 inch floppy disk....
, but quality control problems ruined its reputation. A smaller competitor is the almost unknown Caleb UHD144
Caleb UHD144
The Caleb Technology UHD144 was a floptical-based 144 MB floppy disk system introduced in early 1998, marketed as the it drive. Like other floptical-like systems, the UHD144 could read and write standard 720KB and 1.44MB 3½-inch disks as well...
.
Operating system support
Support of Floptical drives is present in all Windows NTWindows NT
Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...
operating systems up to Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
, where it figures as 20.8 MB drive format option in the FORMAT command options. The FORMAT command in Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
and newer Windows OSes lacks support of the Floptical drive. Floptical support exists in SCO OpenServer as well. SCSI
SCSI
Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...
-equipped Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
computers could boot from a Mac operating system installed on a floptical; a formatting utility application was provided to erase and format floptical disks.