Floptical refers to a type of floppy

disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...

that combines magnetic and optical technologies to store data on media similar to standard -inch

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

s. The name is a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of words and introduced late in 1991 by

Insite Peripherals Insite is the first legal supervised drug injection site in North America, located at 139 East Hastings Street, in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia. The DTES had 4700 chronic drug users in 2000 and h ...

, a venture funded company set up by Jim Adkisson, one of the key engineers behind the original -inch floppy disk drive development at

Shugart Associates Shugart Associates (later Shugart Corporation) was a computer peripheral manufacturer that dominated the floppy disk drive market in the late 1970s and is famous for introducing the -inch "Minifloppy" floppy disk drive. In 1979 it was one of the f ...

in 1976. The main shareholders were

Maxell , commonly known as Maxell, is a Japanese company that manufactures consumer electronics. The company's name is a contraction of "Maximum capacity dry cell". Its main products are batteries, wireless charging products, storage devices, LCD/lase ...

Iomega Iomega (later LenovoEMC) produced external, portable, and networked data storage products. Established in the 1980s in Roy, Utah, United States, Iomega sold more than 410 million digital storage drives and disks, including the Zip drive floppy ...

and 3M.

Technical aspects

The technology involves reading and writing data magnetically, while optically aligning the read/write head in the drive using grooves in the disk being sensed by an infrared LED and sensor (a form of visual servo). The magnetic head touches the recording surface, as it does in a normal floppy drive. The optical servo tracks allow for an increase in the tracking precision of the magnetic head, from the usual 135 tracks per inch to tracks per inch. Floptical disks provide 21 MB of storage. The drive has a second set of read/write heads so that it can read from and write to standard 720 KB and 1.44 MB ( KB) disks as well. To allow for a high degree of compatibility with existing

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, electrical, optical and logical interface ...

host adapters, Floptical drives were designed to work as a standard floppy disk drive, and not as a removable

hard disk A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with mag ...

. To ensure this, a "write lockout" feature was added in the

firmware In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide ...

. This effectively inhibits writing (including any kind of formatting) of the media. It is possible to unlock the drive by issuing a SCSI Mode Sense Command, . It is unclear how much of a problem this is, and Insite also issued

EPROM An EPROM (rarely EROM), or erasable programmable read-only memory, is a type of programmable read-only memory (PROM) chip that retains its data when its power supply is switched off. Computer memory that can retrieve stored data after a power ...

s where this "feature" was not present. At least two models were produced, one with a manual lever that mechanically ejected the disc from the drive, and another with a small pinhole into which a paperclip can be inserted, in case the device rejected or ignored

eject commands.

Market performance

Insite licensed the floptical technology to a number of companies, including Matsushita,

, Maxell/Hitachi and others. A number of these companies later formed the Floptical Technology Association, or FTA, to try to have the format adopted as a replacement of standard floppy disks. Around 70,000 Insite Flopticals are believed to have been sold worldwide in the product's lifetime.

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

used them in their SGI Indigo and

SGI Indy The Indy, code-named "Guinness", is a low-end multimedia workstation introduced on July 12, 1993. Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI) developed, manufactured, and marketed Indy as the lowest end of its product line, for computer-aided design ( ...

series of

computer workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''work ...

s. It was also reported that

Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mac ...

had selected the Insite Floptical for its

Amiga 3000 The Commodore Amiga 3000, or A3000, is a personal computer released by Commodore in June 1990. It features improved processing speed, improved graphics rendering, and a new revision of the operating system. It is the successor to the Amiga 2000 ...

. However, this did not take place, and while Flopticals were installed in many Amiga systems, they were sold by either Insite, TTR Development or Digital Micronics (DMI), and not bundled by Commodore. Iomega licensed the Floptical technology as early as 1989 and produced a compatible drive known as the Insider. A few years later, a number of other companies introduced Floptical-like but incompatible systems: Iomega introduced their own ZIP-100 system storing 100 MB in 1994, which would go on to sell into the tens of millions. Later versions would increase the capacity to 250 and 750 MB. Another similar system was Imation's LS‑120 ''SuperDisk'' in 1996. The LS-120 stored 120 MB of data while retaining the ability to work with normal -inch disks, interfacing as a standard floppy for better compatibility. A later

LS-240 The SuperDisk LS-120 is a high-speed, high-capacity alternative to the 90 mm (3.5 in), 1.44 MB floppy disk. The SuperDisk hardware was created by 3M's storage products group Imation in 1997, with manufacturing chiefly by ...

version would store up to 240 MB. A smaller competitor was the almost unknown Caleb UHD144 in 1997. Since 1998,

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

also tried their own Floptical-based format, the Sony HiFD, but quality control problems ruined its reputation. The first version could store 150 MB, but it was soon replaced by a 200 MB version. There was serious consideration that one of these systems would succeed where the Floptical failed and replace the standard floppy disk outright, but the rapid introduction of writable CD-ROM systems in the early 2000s made the market disappear.

Operating system support

Support of Floptical drives is present in all

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Wi ...

operating systems up to

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was official ...

, where it figures as 20.8 MB drive format option in the FORMAT command options. The FORMAT command in

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...

and newer lacks support of the Floptical drive. Floptical support exists in SCO

OpenServer Xinuos OpenServer, previously SCO UNIX and SCO Open Desktop (SCO ODT), is a closed source computer operating system developed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), later acquired by SCO Group, and now owned by Xinuos. Early versions of OpenServer were ...

as well.

-equipped

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

computers could boot from a Mac operating system installed on a Floptical; a formatting utility application was provided to erase and format Floptical disks. Likewise, Silicon Graphics's

IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system ...

operating system includes Floptical support.

Technical aspects

Market performance

Operating system support

See also

References

Further reading