MiniDisk Drives. Why not?

[ironique]

There's something i've always wondered about. Why is it that the technology used to build minidisk players hasn't been ported to the PC to create minidisk drives? This would be the ultimate replacement for the ageing floppy drive in my opinion. What is it about the technology used to build minidisk drives that prevents them from being ported to the PC platfrom? Or is it a cost-effectiveness issue? Or is it just that no one has thought of it yet (I'd find that hard to believe!)? What's the difference between the optical media used in minidisks and that used in the standard CDR/CDRW? How are we able to store 74 minutes of music on a minidisk as well as on a standard CDR yet the latter is more than triple in physical size? Any insights?

 

[Peter]

Minidisk players essentially are MO drives. These have been around since 1993 or so, currently at 2.3 GBytes. Media are cheap, drives aren't. That's why they didn't become more mainstream - same problem as with the LS120 superfloppy drives. As soon as cost is added to the retail PC, it's not going to happen.

MO drives are popular where random read/write access and longevity of data retention on the media are required.

 

[ironique]

Sorry, you lost me there for a bit. What are MO drives? Please explain.

 

[Mark R]

MO - magneto-optical.

These discs work on the principle that a magnetised area of a certain type of material can rotate the plane of polarisation of laser light.

 

[Liviathan]

This was something that I always wondered about, but there is no push to replace the floppy with anything else since CDR's are so low in price now.

 

[Sahakiel]

I also believe a minidisk and a CD hold the same amount of information. A minidisk is just more compressed, similar to what mp3 does for CD's.

 

[CallTheFBI]

I think mini DVD discs blow both of them away.

 

[ironique]

Thanks Mark R. I posted this thread coz the other day I came across an PC magazine add for a laptop with a minidisk drive and I thought, if they can do it for laptops, why not for Desktop PCs? And about the drive costs, can they be more expensive than a present day DVD-RW/CD-RW Combo drive. Coz if not, I don't see what's stopping the. Peter said their capacity is up to 2.3GB (is that generally for MO drives or is it specific to minidisks?) that's a pretty large capacity if you ask me. And about MiniDVDs, what's their maximum capacity?

 

[Peter]

Minidiscs are a mere 128 MBytes. Fujitsu and Sony did the MO drives when they first came out ten years ago (at 128 MBytes), then quickly increased to 230, 640, 1300 and now 2300 MBytes. All backward compatible btw. It's a good solution.

 

[Shalmanese]

Also, wasnt one of the reasons MD didn't take off was due to restrictive Sony licensing and the like?

 

[dpopiz]

yes, mini dvd-r's will be really cool

btw minidiscs DON'T hold as much as cd's. they have somewhere near the capacity of mini cd's (185mb). the only reason minidiscs are able to hold 74mins of audio is that it is compressed.

 

[Mark R]

MD (until recently) was very slow - approx 1/4x CD speed (much slower than ZIP).

I've seen some specialised equipment using MD storage - e.g. a medical digital camera. Resolution was 800x600 - it would take 15 seconds to load/save a single image!

Although it had small size, and low media cost - it's low capacity, low speed, low market penetration, lack of backwards compatability with CD have been largely against it.

 

[everman]

Does anyone know the storage capacity of the minidiscs used in minidisc music players? I have a Sony MZn1 and I love it, it's so small and I can fit more than enough music on a disk for my purposes, great sound quality etc

 

[Peter]

I told that already, around 128 MBytes.

 

[TMPadmin]

It almost looks by some of the posts some are speaking of the SONY MD and some are speaking of the little cd's that fit into a standard CD player. I am all for ANYTHING that replaces the floppy. I refuse to use them anymore but my users insist on using them so I have to keep them around. The biggest issue is the SONY licensing of the technology. Just like BETA tapes died so will the MD. It is far superior in may way and if the technological licensing would be released it could go even further but SONY would rather let it die than let others improve on something they started. I have an MD and all I use it for now is to record meetings then I hook it into my computer and make MP3's from it.

 

[Peter]

USB memory sticks are the technology of the day, at least for carrying stuff around that used to be on floppies.

Now if only more systems had USB ports on the keyboard, monitor, or at least on the case front ...

 

[ironique]

Oh yes, USB memory sticks, another beautiful floppy replacement. How practical are they? I say beautiful, not coz I've used them but coz, I've read about them and they seem pretty cool. What's the technology behind them Pete? Is it the same technology they use for flash cards?

 

[Mday]

the migration to MO is because of licensing and politics. MO discs can last for hundreds of years with a million re\writes. MO never caught on here because of powers like the RIAA and stuff, just like DAT was killed by them. the latest product based on MO tech is or was imation's dataplay. they are like the size of CF media with 500MB, and write once.

 

[ReiAyanami]

Dell's killing the floppy like Apple did a few years ago.

 

[drag]

I've used MOs before and loved em. At the school I work at (electronic imaging and graphics) there are a few MOdrives laying around b\people use sometimes, use to be more... The students just don't use em. They are more comfortable with zips. The teachers and staff that have been there for a long time don't understand why people use zips when they can use MO's. They are so much nicer and cheaper/faster in the long run. Plus zips are always getting stuck in those cheap-a#$ drives.

 

[Koing]

Originally posted by: Sahakiel
I also believe a minidisk and a CD hold the same amount of information. A minidisk is just more compressed, similar to what mp3 does for CD's.

The MiniDiscs hold 140mbs. Not 128mbs.

The problem is the record speeds. They record 1x speed.

You see a MiniDics drive in the Sony laptops but they can only record *music* and NOT DATA. You record music to them. Mp3's etc. They are converted to ATRAC the sound format of the MiniDisc's. The 4x speed isn't real.

And its not UNTIL recently. The MiniDics are *1X SPEED*.

The 1/4x speed or 32x that is quoted is for MUSIC TRANSFERS ONLY. The 32x speed is with the music that is compressed up to 4x the normal bitrate that his how they get that speed.

They quote 16x speed for LP2 compression but I don't want compression.

Didn't take off because of the poor write speeds. Otherwise you'd have 4x or more REAL TIME transfers of MiniDics but you don't

 

[unclebabar]

> Why is it that the technology used to build minidisk players hasn't been ported to the PC to create minidisk drives?

probably nobody wanted to pay Sony royalties, and besides people who needed it had full size (650MB) MO discs to play with.

> How are we able to store 74 minutes of music on a minidisk as well as on a standard CDR yet the latter is more than triple in physical size? Any insights?

as mentioned above, Sony Mini-discs (at least the older 90's models) used ATRAC compression. I've never owned one, but my audiophile friends have told me the compression was unacceptably lossy at higer frequencies. The real (uncompressed) capacity of a mini-disc seems to be about the same as a 3" cd-r blank.

there's no need to bark at this tree, there's no squirrel up there.

 

[MadRat]

Solid state is the way to go for floppy replacement. We don't want spinning drives as they kill the battery in laptops! Faster and denser technology is coming out every year in solid state solutions. We'll see 1GB on an affordable solid state drive within two years. We already have 1GB sticks of FLASH memory. Its very reasonable to buy 4MB-16MB sticks as it is, but we need CMOS makers to add in support for bootstrapping.

 

[crypticlogin]

I know I wanted one of these when MD came around, but the drive and media (not the less expensive audio MD) was expensive, and sold only in Europe. MiniDisc Data drive.