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Gentle HP 3000 List Members,

Last week, I bought a LS-120 floppy disk drive for my notebook.  This
little gem fits in my notebook's multibay and effectively replaces the
regular floppy disk drive.  Replacing the floppy drive?  Big deal! I hear
you say.  Well it is a big deal, because this SuperDisk also writes 120 MB
of data to the LS-120 floppy.  This diskette is the same size, shape and
weight as the regular 1.44MB floppy, except it holds around 80 times as
much data.  It is also a lot faster than the regular floppy drive.  This is
the product of Imation, which is (or was) a 3M company.  The diskettes have
3M logos on them.

After testing this latest gadget, storing and restoring huge (for a PC)
files, I got to thinking.  In the palm of my hand, on a floppy diskette, I
had as much storage capacity as the HP7925 of 19 years ago.  I remember
when I installed a HP 3000 Series 33, we had ordered the "big disk" at the
time, thinking we were going to start small and have room to grow.  This
big disk was the 7925, a 120 MB, removable disk pack device. It was as big
as a washing machine, required 220 VAC power (I do not remember for sure)
and had one switch in the front.  The disk pack was large and very fragile.
 (If you shook it too hard, the bits would fall off.:) )  MPE was a lot
smaller in those days.

The series 33 did not come with a tape drive.  Instead this desk-like
computer used a floppy drive for backups.   The console was a 2749 with
dual integrated tape drives.  On these little cartridges you would run the
various diagnostics program which interfaced with the HP 3000 hardware.

Anyways, after installing MPE III 1912, I started a backup to the floppy
disks (I think the 360KB  8-inch size. They were physically big but did not
hold much data.)  Within a few minutes, it became apparent this was not
going to be satisfactory.  Later that week, we bought a 7970E Low Boy tape
drive (1600BPI).  Backing up that 120 MB (at about 75% full) would take
three tapes and 1.5 hours.

Copying 80MB to the LS-120 takes about 5 minutes and it all fits on a
single floppy with 33% unused space.

I do not use the LS-120 as a backup device, after all the disk drive is a
4GB device and it would take many diskettes.  For backups I use a DAT
drive, but the LS-120 is extremely convenient to move files around and to
quickly backup a folder or several large files.

On that nostalgic note, the rain has started here in South Texas, and
vacation time has arrived.

Kind regards,

Denys. . .

Denys Beauchemin
HICOMP America, Inc.
(800) 323-8863  (281) 288-7438         Fax: (281) 355-6879
denys at hicomp.com                             www.hicomp.com