Info on LS120 Drives?

[joshg]

Hi can someone clue me in on some information regarding LS120 drives? I think I would like to get one, but...

1) Do they connect to the floppy channel of a motherboard, or on the ATA100 channel?
2) I heard that they read standard 1.44MB floppy disks at 5x the speed of a regular floppy drive?
3) What other possible benefits/drawbacks would there be to replacing my current floppy drive w/ an LS120 drive?

Thanks, please fill me in!

- Josh

 

[joshg]

Also, are there LS240 drives, too?!? what are the specs/benefits of them?

 

[wasnlos]

LS-120-drives are hooked to IDE-port just like a CDROM/BURNER/DVD.
they read floppydisks a lot faster, don't know if it's 5x the speed.

possible drawbacks:
none if it's just for your personal use
just a little sidenote, PANASONIC just recently stopped the production of that kind of drives due to low sales-numbers.

i never heard or came across LS-240-drives, so i guess they don't exist .

 

[damien6]

1) No they just connect to your IDE controller (unless you got a scsi one = 50 Pin) and they're ATA33.
2) Yes, they read standard floppies and LS-120 disks, the first generation was 1x speed (then 2x +)
3) I haven't noticed any draw backs except for it taking up one of my IDE connector where as I could normally disable the onboard IDE controller since I don't find any use for them. The scsi version, I found somewhat less useful because it can't boot off of it should the need ever a rise.

As for the LS-240 - same as LS-120 but could write more in somewhat condense mode and is backward compatible but LS-120/floppy can't read them though.

 

[joshg]

Yeah, I'm reading up on all of it right now, there are a few LS-240 drives, most are USB. And some of them actually reformat standard 1.44MB floppy disks to have 32MB of data, but you can only use them with the 240 drive after that. But I don't think there are any internal IDE drives for ls240 out yet.

This is very exciting for me, get rid of this old crappy floppy and get something new and fresh, add life to my old floppy disks. But on the downside I'll need to buy an ATA100 controller, too, so that I can have my HDs, DVD, CDRW, and this 240 SuperDisk (if they ever make an internal one).

- Josh

 

[Zepper]

Yeah, the LS-120 is very good. I've had several the latest being a Panasonic 2x (not 240, just twice as fast on LS-120 disks as original). The new one that Panasonic is supposed to have built is to a profile that could be internal on a laptop-and typically will be slower than one built to standard floppy drive dimensions. But as others said, it can cram 32MB (raw data/not compressed) on a standard floppy diskette/ 240 on an LS-120 disk. I would buy one if they ever make standard size. You should be able to find the 2x models cheap if all you want is a faster floppy drive.
.bh.

 

[Keego]

I loved my LS-120 but they broke twice (bought 3 in all!)