History (1991): Superfloppy Drives Coming Along

Hitachi and 3M are signing an agreement with Insite to manufacture 20MB diskettes.

Verbatim is doing like-wise with Brier.

NeXT is integrating a 2.88MB drive.

Apple should soon follow on its high-end computers.

Are high capacity floppy diskettes finally going to become common? Let’s remember that Osborne’s 5.25-inch floppy disk stored 80KB. Seven years after, we were up to 1.2MB, a fifteen-fold increase. Today, new ultra-high capacity 3.5-inch drives have the potential to displace 720KB and 1.44MB floppy drives. Four years ago, Toshiba of Japan announced a commercial version of a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 4MB FDD. In 1988, Insite Peripherals (San Jose, CA) revealed a new super microfloppy drive with 25MB of storage and an access time of 65ms, and Brier Technology (Norcross, GA) a 25MB Flextra unit with a 35ms access time and, even better, a 43.2MB FDD with a 29ms average access time.

Where do we stand today?
Things have not really improved. Many were expecting IBM to integrate 4MB (2.88MB formatted) 3.5-inch diskettes in its microcomputers, but Big Blue is continuously delaying it. However, some recent events seem to prove that the proceeding has began, with 2.88 as well as with 20MB diskettes.

Insite and Brier finding partners
At Comdex/Spring’91, Brier and announced that it had appointed Verbatim Corp. (Charlotte, NC) to supply its high-density floppy diskettes. In November 1989, Brier signed comprehensive business arrangement with Kazuno-NCL, a group of company of National Computer Ltd. which manufactures microcomputer products and subsystems. NCL will produce Brier-developed Flextra 25MB and 50MB FDDs at its facility in Kazuno in Japan. Volume production began last April. Brier signed an agreement in February 1991 with Quadram, a manufacturer and marketer of PC enhancements, to OEM the Flextra subsystem.

Last May, Insite named Hitachi Maxell Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) and 3M’s data storage products division (Saint-Paul, MN), as semi-exclusive media licensees for the production of its Floptical diskettes. The two new partners made a significant equity investment in Insite. Both companies are already jointly exploring the development of next gen products with capacities of 40 and 80MB.

Let ‘s not forget that earlier, Insite had signed a non-exclusive agreement for Floptical technology development and manufacture with Iomega (Roy, UT) which is currently working with Chinon Industries of Japan as its manufacturing partner.

Insite’s drive uses an optical servo scheme and could go into volume production with Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd. The huge US distributor Arrow Electronics signed on for several million of dollars with Insite to put the unit in its catalog.

But there are other projected diskettes of over 10MB worldwide, not from US companies but from Japanese ones.

Citizen Watch (Tokyo, Japan) introduced a 26.5MB drive with a metal-in- gap head, an embedded servo positioning, and a 50ms access time, but had to postpone its production on account of technical problems.

Last year, NEC unveiled a 10MB FDD using Hitachi Maxell’s disks with embedded servo data prewritten on them.

YE-Data uses a technology called prediction control servo mechanism for its 20MB drive and plans to go to 42MB with RLL recording format.

If these drives of over 10MB are generally supposed to function with lower capacity diskettes, the problem is that all these units are totally incompatible among each other and that their production is not sufficient.

Apple could soon adopt the 2.88MB diskette
On the contrary, for unformatted 4MB diskettes, the customer is only missing before mass production. In the computer business, there only are two major manufacturers throughout the world, Apple and IBM, who could set a standard for diskettes. With Hewlett-Packard, Apple became a leading actor in the acceptance of 3.5-inch diskettes. IBM followed.

It’s been 3 years since we are waiting for Big Blue to choose 4MB diskettes. But there are encouraging signs, most BIOS offer the possibility of using the new 4MB drive that is supported by Microsoft DOS 5.0 and OS/2 1.30.1.

From a reliable source, we have found out that two new Apple systems, that should be announced in January 1992, both based on 25MHz Motorola 68040 processors, the first one a desktop model, the second one a tower configuration, should include a formatted 2.88MB FDD instead of the 1.44MB one used actual Macintoshes. This could be the big start off for high capacity diskettes.

Until now, only few computer manufacturers attempted something different. Commodore is one of them who announced its decision, at the end of 1990, to incorporate a high capacity diskette from Insite, in its future multimedia microcomputers under Unix. Canon, Sharp and Toshiba integrated the 2.88MB diskette in their small dedicated systems. NeXT Inc. (Redwood City, CA), well-known to be venturesome, also adopted it on its Newstation, Nextcube and Nextstation Color, as this Sony-manufactured drive can read and write files in 1.44MB (1.2MB in Japan) and 720KB MS-DOS formats.

Toshiba is the most tenacious actor to support the unformatted 4MB diskette which is on its way to becoming an ISO standard. It has licensed at least 12 drive makers and 18 disk manufacturers for its technology. Drives offer downward compatibility with 1, 1.6 and 2MB formats. They have the same number of tracks, 80, and the same number of tracks per inch, 135, as conventional 1.44MB drives, but barium ferrite media and perpendicular magnetization are used to increase density of data stored along the tracks to a maximum of 34,868 bpi.

Disk/Trend estimated worldwide population of over 5MB diskettes to 105,000 drives last year, a decline compared with 1989. This drop was explained by the fact that the first drives would not accept actual 1 or 2MB diskettes, most commonly used today. Forecasts for 1993 are 879,000 units sold, this will still be insignificant, less than 2% of a worldwide 45.7 million drive market.

It will nevertheless take a few years before everyone can use super diskettes of over MB. First will come 4MB floppies with a more mature technology, then afterwards 128MB 3.5-inch magneto-optical disks.

Chronology of important milestones in development of barium ferrite media for perpendicular recording, according to Toshiba:
* 1978: researchers at Toshiba R&D center establish a concept of barium ferrite as a medium for perpendicular recording
* 1982: barium ferrite tape demonstrated for the first time in the world at a company’s private
* 1985: Toshiba displays first 3.5-inch floppy disk and drive at NCC
* 1987: the Japanese firm announces a development of a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 16MB technology
* 1987: the company announces a commercial version of barium ferrite 4MB FDD
* 1988: at Comdex/Spring, Data Technology reveals a 5.25-inch 20MB FD/ FDD product utilizing barium ferrite media
* 1988: Toshiba and Teac announces a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 4MB FDD, one-inch high with downward compatibility with 1 and 2MB drives
* 1988: barium ferrite products at Comdex/Fall: Iomega 5.25-inch 44MB, Brier 3.5-inch 21 and 43MB, Insite 3.5-inch 21MB, Qume/Kodak 5.25-inch 20MB FD/FDDs
* 1988: Toshiba introduces the JW-S30, a Japanese word processor employing a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 4MB FD/FDD
* 1989: Logitec announces the LFD-302, an add-on subsystem for the PC98 series, and Sharp introduces the D P-3000 desktop publishing system, both using a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 4MB FD/FDD
* 1990: Canon reveals a desktop publishing system using a barium ferrite 3.5-inch 4MB FD/FDD

What’s barium ferrite?
The particles used in conventional recording media are shaped like needles, and therefore difficulties arise in maintaining perpendicular orientation throughout the manufacturing process.

Barium ferrite particles, on the other hand, are tiny flat platelets, hexagonal in shape, that can be readily arranged to have their easy axis of magnetization perpendicular to the platelet plane.

Barium ferrite has long been used as a permanent magnet material, but the particles for permanent magnets have grain sizes too large to be suitable for high-density magnetic recording.

However, Dr. Fujiwara and Toshiba’s researchers have developed ultra-fine barium ferrite particles with optimum shape, size and magnetic properties. The Toshiba researchers also perfected a glass crystallization method for the manufacture of the ultra-fine barium ferrite particles. The process begins by mixing glass, barium ferrite components and the ion substitution components and melting them at high temperature. The mixture is poured between rotating nip rollers for rapid quenching and forms glass flakes. These are heated again to crystallize them. The crystallized barium ferrite particles are extracted by dissolving the remaining compounds with acid, then rinsed and dried.

This process produces fine, separate particles of uniform size with good magnetization properties. In the next step, a magnetic paint is made by mixing the barium ferrite particles in a mixture of binder resin and solvents and other ingredients. The magnetic paint then can be coated onto a base polyester films and dried, and the surface smoothness enhanced by rolling. After curing, the films can be cut to form tapes, or punched out in the form of flexible disks

Last minute:
IBM adopting 4MB diskette As we are publishing, IBM has launched two PS/2 microcomputers, with a 2.88MB formatted FDD, double the 1.44MB capacity common today. They are 8557-045 and 8557-A49 positioned as IBM’s i386 SX high end, featuring MCA bus. This means that Apple and IBM, by integrating an unformatted 4MB FDD, would set a new de facto standard.

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠41, published on June 1991.