DOS ain't dead - LS-120 drives

w3a537

Colorado Springs CO USA,
06.09.2012, 08:58

LS-120 drives (Users)

I'm going to put this in another thread.
Opening the topic for possible discussions.

I have several laptops and several desktops.

As for the desktops each has an internal LS-120 super floppy drive.

The LS-120 reads both 1.44mb diskettes and 120mb optical diskettes.

It reads 1.44mb diskettes at approximately 4x speed.

This technology works great but it was abandoned long
before it should have been.

Drives and media are still available on EBAY, some brand new.

The desktop drives are IDE. There are also external USB drives.

The LS-120s work just fine on my systems.

Steve ...

RayeR

CZ,
07.09.2012, 01:12

@ w3a537

LS-120 drives

Post reply

I remember that in old times it was introduced as modern replacement of FDD but it was very rare here, I never touch real media or drive. I had bought it's competitor Iomega ZIP 100 drive (no FDD compatible) because it was mounted at university computers and it was the only way to transfer big files. I was satisfied with it, better speed and no more bad blocks (berore I RARed to 10 FDD pack and usually it happened that the latest floppy had a BB and entire transfer had to be done again). This suxx. Fortunatelly we have much better and safe media now :)

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Rugxulo

Usono,
07.09.2012, 05:32

@ RayeR

LS-120 drives

Post reply

> I remember that in old times it was introduced as modern replacement of FDD
> but it was very rare here, I never touch real media or drive. I had bought
> it's competitor Iomega ZIP 100 drive (no FDD compatible) because it was
> mounted at university computers and it was the only way to transfer big
> files. I was satisfied with it, better speed and no more bad blocks (berore
> I RARed to 10 FDD pack and usually it happened that the latest floppy had a
> BB and entire transfer had to be done again). This suxx. Fortunatelly we
> have much better and safe media now :)

Many archivers have support for redundancy of blocks so that if one part goes bad, you can still recover the whole thing (or at least part). Granted, I've not used any such feature lately (and barely at all), but it's existed in several forms over the years.

RayeR

CZ,
10.09.2012, 00:41

@ Rugxulo

LS-120 drives

Post reply

> Many archivers have support for redundancy of blocks so that if one part
> goes bad, you can still recover the whole thing (or at least part).
> Granted, I've not used any such feature lately (and barely at all), but
> it's existed in several forms over the years.

I know that RAR has "add recovery record" but sometimes things doesn't go as in theory...

---
DOS gives me freedom to unlimited HW access.

Doug 10.09.2012, 20:13 @ RayeR	LS-120 drives Post reply
	I also have never seen an actual drive, but just last week i saw a couple of handfuls of LS-120 disks at a yardsale. They looked like thin Zip disks. Didn't bother to buy any. I actually had an old IBM desktop that had support for LS-120 in the BIOS -- as the second diskette (B:) drive! I tried connecting standard (1m44) diskette drives for B:, but they were never recognized. - Doug B.

w3a537 Colorado Springs CO USA, 11.09.2012, 06:56 @ Doug	LS-120 drives Post reply
	I've had a number of systems with LS-120 support in the bios. Not uncommon at all. Even this laptop I'm on right now recognizes ans supports LS-120s on a USB port. Steve ...