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LS-120: The 90s Super Floppy That Flopped

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This Does Not Compute

Among the different disk formats battling for attention in the 1990s, the LS120 SuperDisk looked like it could be the true successor to the floppy...but ended up going nowhere.

Sources:
"Insite's Floptical Drive to Increase Storage Capacity," InfoWorld, August 15, 1988.
"Floptical Disk Drive Delivers 21MB of Storage," PC Magazine, May 26, 1992.
Insight floptical drive photo: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedi...
3M floptical disk photo: https://www.podatkovnimediji.com/1991...
"486 Group to Discuss HighDensity Drives," InfoWorld, April 3, 1989.
"Iomega's Floptical Drive: 21MB on One Disk," PC Magazine, June 29, 2993.
"HighCapacity Floppies Are Drives of the Future," InfoWorld, September 12, 1988.
"Is Iomega's Zip Tomorrow's Floppy Disk Drive?" PC Magazine, June 27, 1995.
"Vendors vie for floppy territory," Computerworld, July 8, 1996.
"New Superfloppy Contender," PC Magazine, October 6, 1998.
Caleb UHD144 disk photo: https://obsoletemedia.org/calebuhd14...
Boxed Caleb UHD144 drive photo: @foone on Twitter
"Caleb Technology Releases Monster Floppy," Computerworld, April 3, 2000.
"Sony and Fuji add third highcapacity drive to the fray," InfoWorld, October 27, 1997.
Sony HiFD disk photo: https://obsoletemedia.org/hifd
Fuji HiFD disk photos: https://newsbeezer.com/japaneng/next...
"Floppy Disk Drives," PC Magazine, March 9, 1999.
"Sony's 200MB Floppy Disk Drive," PC Magazine, May 4, 1999.
"Digital Point & Shoots," American Photo, JulyAugust 2000.
Panasonic PVSD5000 photo: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125378568476
"Inside Track," PC Magazine, February 23, 1999.
LS240 drive photos: https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/q...

00:00 Introduction
00:30 Space battles
01:14 The floptical option
02:33 Good technology, bad implementation
03:03 The launch of a super disk
03:35 A battle on two fronts
06:36 A glimmer of hope
09:23 SuperDisk, take 2
10:07 If not for Zip...

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Music by Epidemic Sound (https://www.epidemicsound.com).
Intro music by BoxCat Games (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Bo....

posted by u2d1pql