History (1988): First Available Magneto-Optical Disks

From Sony and Advanced Graphic Applications

By Jean Jacques Maleval | June 19, 2019 at 2:22 pm

During 10th Comdex on November 14-18 in Las Vegas, NV, Sony Corporation of America (Park Ridge, NJ) and Advanced Graphic Applications Inc. (New York, NY) announced that they are the first ones to offer magneto-optical drives.

History 1988 First Available Magneto Optical Disks Sony Advanced Graphic Applications

Canon, Ricoh, and Maxtor should follow in a few months.

They all chose the 5.25-inch form factor with capacities ranging from 256MB on one side and up to 650MB on two sides.

While waiting for Seiko Epson, Verbatim is the only one to offer 3.5-inch form factor with a 60MB disk and an average 30ms seek time.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠11, volume ≠1, published on November 1988.