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ORB drives are claimed to be shipping
sumC writes "Those ORB drives are finaly shipping
according to
their manufacturer "
This distributor's website
appears to have them. I tried to phone them, but they're closed
for lunch...
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I could use one of these :)
Wow, the distributors offices are only a few
blocks from where I live according to the map.
I should go down there and say "first!" before
I buy a drive.
I'm glad to see a competitor to Iomega, especially since these are pretty damn cool. It's too bad SyQuest went down the tubes, 'cause they were always better.
I'm not an AC, I just forget my password.
--Kyobu
I've been wanting one of these forever now...
I've stayed away from Iomega as they're too expensive for what you get (that and the click-o-death).
SeaQuest(sp?) drives were nice, but they're kind of outta business now.
Anyway, cheap removable store would really be a Godsend. I need it now! =)
The "ORB Fact Sheet" link on the manufacturer's has this to say about cost:
---
Incredibly, these capabilities come at a substantially lower cost: ORB's current drive
retail packages, including one 2.2 GB ORB disk, cable and power supply have a
suggested retail price of $199.95, about 70 percent lower than comparable packages.
Separate 2.2 GB ORB disks have a suggested retail price of just $29.95, about 80
percent less than the cost of competitive media, driving the cost of storage to a new
low of $0.0138 per megabyte. And it's the same price for SCSI or Parallel Port external
versions.
---
The "don't drop it on the floor" rule applies to any removable media. What are you expecting, media you can slap around like a hockey puck?
If one was to buy the SCSI version, would you need any special drivers for linux?
SCSI/Parallel?
Get with the times, where are the USB and firewire versions?
Hey, where's Linux USB support, speaking of?
We need to just put these outdated bus schemes in the technology graveyard!
I found no tech info on the web; it is unclear if Castlewood will require NDAs.
As a minimum, we will need to know the number of sectors per track and/or number of tracks. Presumably, there are 2 heads.
Um, since when has external SCSI been an "outdated bus scheme"?
IF they'd delivered when they promised they would (early '98), they would indeed be kicking major ass in the marketplace by now. But it's kind of late now, higher capacity drives will be coming from the other manufacturers very soon.
Besides, DVD-RAM looks like the way to go. Standards-based media formats are a good thing.
there was a post a while back about these thing,
i automagicaly tought everybody still rememberd it
:) sorry
sumC
It says in the technical specification that the disks don't require formatting. Hmmm....I wonder what kind of ramifications this will bring forth.
I'm sure the SCSI version will have no problems in Linux. Like the Jaz, it would show up as a normal hard drive. Just unmount it before you remove the disk.
The IDE one may work with the newer removable IDE device driver in 2.2 kernels (LS-120 worked wonderfully), but it's not as much of a sure thing as SCSI.
It's not exactly a true startup as they are backed by Sanyo of Japan.
I don't know about Linux, but on Solaris it will automagically mount by itself on /rmscsi. (You can get Solaris for near free $20 at http://www.sun.com/developers .
They don't list Linux as a "supported" OS, they aren't much larger or faster or really too much better (except that they appear to be somewhat cheaper) than any of their competitors, and they will work for complete crap as an external storage device for Linux laptops because the external version looks like it's only going to work as USB or Firewire, for neither of which does Linux have support. If I want something on my internal PC at home, it's still a lot cheaper to just buy another really big hard drive than one of these things.
So I can't figure out why anyone cares about these?
That's one of those sorry assed garlic breathed web sites that tries to take control of your browser and refuses to let you leave.
Be sure to register your displeasure with their web master.
If one were to buy the SCSI version, all one would need would be a support for the SCSI card.
Firewire although easy to install devices is still slightly slower than SCSI. SCSI won't died for a while say, 5 years. Their are too many devices for them, a huge install base, still faster until a 800 Mb/s firewire standard comes out.
Look pal, you haven't been keeping up in your technical experience. ever used a 100x CD rom drive. Ever used some of those new DVD-ROm drives. they read just as fast as a hard drive. DVD-RAM althought it writes slow is still way faster than a CD-RW and it can read pretty fast too.
And if UDF is crap then its partly your fault if you "wrote" part of it.
i'd put up $5 to go towards the purchase of one...
logan@bitsmart.com
2lazy to login
Browse through the press releases, USB does get a nod in there.
When did PCs start having trouble dealing with 300Mb/s transfers? Isn't the PCI bus good for something like 3 times that?
USB is 12 mbps, not Mbps. Big difference (factor of 8)
Also, saw the 1394 (firewire) implementation at MacWorld SF this year. Pretty cool.
Linux'll have USB and 1394 support by the time the standards really become popular, so complaining about it now is stupid
The drop squad has arrived!!!
*Takes an Orb disk and drops it from the top of the Long Beach World Trade Center*
*Hurries to the bottom floor*
*Oh shit...*
Uh I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is for $30 you can take one Orb disk and make THREE from one by dropping it from the top of the world trade center!
The bad news? It's probably unusable thereafter.
(c)1999 the drop squad.
They're going to do both USB and FireWire versions. Now what I want to know is how easy it'll be to make an external into an internal and back ...
Thanks,
Pete
OK, so that's 3 words.
Sure, big IDE harddrives are cheap. But you can't easily pull them out every friday and put them in the safe. And while 10g HD might be about the same as 10gig of ORB, 12 gig of ORB is much less then 12 gig of HD and 220 gig of ORB is an order of magnitude less then 220 gig of HD.
-Philip
Can't wait until the USB version comes out. Sweet! Probably would need some nifty drivers to get it to work in Linux though...
- Jeff
I spoke with one of the senior engineering folks from ORB at Comdex this year about the parallel-port drive (wearing my FreeBSD hat). They were quite open about the fact that their parallel-port interface is implemented using a third-party device, and this third party is currently openly hostile to open-source developers.
Geez.
I guess you'd also believe Win 2000 will solve the world's problems. I have a measly 20x CD-ROM drive (2x DVD to be exact, I hate its sound. I don't even want to know how irritating 100x CD will sound.
People don't have Ultra/33 or Ultra/66
Ok let's compare a 3 year old IDE 500 meg drive with your there tomorrow CD.
Dude, your ass is huge.
I posted before on how my Syquest EIDE drive was so great. Then of course it started getting read errors on all of my disks! I thought I just got a lemon so I picked up another drive as a spare and the SOB started doing the same shit after a couple of weeks of use!
So I put the drives in a test box and ran a sector scan and I find that both drives have trouble reading several sectors on different disks.. but one is a bit more sensitive. I have 5 disks and most of them have been having problems lately with read errors and I have lost some major giggage because of these shit drives.
My suggestion, just get some cheap 10GB+ EIDE drives and forget that removeable media even exists!
I use CDR all the time, and its good enough for me as reusable writeable media, multisession LIVES ON and RULES!!! I mean i have one CD i keep updating source code/backsup and i ahve 20 multisessions on it Another linux cd , i have archieves of kernels, latest updates, and I keep weekly updating it with latest bits and pieces, last me for ages... CDR to me is a cheep good BETTER ZIP disk alternative that has 100X more READERS and CHEEPER media. CDR ROCKS forever, and so will DVD-RAM when ever it is finalized... and if its affordable but i rarely NEED 4gig for 20 times cost of .7gig
And you are lucky if the 100x CDROM pulls 8x on a CDR. Without even scratches or so on the CDR. So all this superfast CDROMs are superslow when it comes to "custom" data. ;)
Damn you people with nice systems ... damn you all !
Actually, most hard drives out their are IDE. Personally, I have a EIDE hard drive but my motherboad chipset doesn't support it. Just because a technology is out doesn't mean everyone will have it. Just like these CD drives, I'm sure not everyone is going to have one or want one.
A good hard drive will take under 10ms to seek, while I belive that most CD type drives take at least ten times as long
I spoke to the orb people at length at Comdex in Las Vegas. They plan not only to be the removable drive of choice, but to eventually reach a price point that will displace the VCR and DVD-RAM. They have a partner in consumer electronics who has already built some VCR-like devices. If I remember correctly it was Hitachi.
As far as I know, basic usb (e.g. mice, keyboard for imac) is working, but Firewire is very immature. Last time I checked, the linux 1394 project was being worked on by one person. Seeing as there are firewire ports on all of the new macs and the orb device does have a firewire version, I'd say, yes, it is a concern, and no, worry now is not stupid.
A millibit (not milibit) is one thousandth of a bit. :)
They're practically indestructible. I'd go so far as to say that the "don't drop" rule applies to them.
And to tapes. Don't forget tapes. I've dropped my share of DC2120 and DAT tapes in my day, and they've survived without difficulty.
CDs seem to be relatively droppable.
So... um... you're wrong.
Since I can't imagine you would actually want a USB device over a SCSI device... unless you have some kind of problem with good performance, I suppose.
No thanks. Deliberately crippled standards aren't something I'm interested in.
Since when does either USB or FireWire matter? Why does everyone whine about them, when 99% of hardware ships without either?
(And please, don't fire back with "every motherboard has a USB connector..." those're useless without forking for a USB hub, and for the USB headers, in the case of BAT boards)
Well, I guess "a while" was about 3 days. I received my ORB drive on Tuesday (the 16th). So far, it seems to work just fine. The "feel" of the drive and media is very similar to a SyQuest drive (my experience is with the old 44 MB and 230 MB drive, so I can't compare to their newer drives).
The plastic case the media comes in is MUCH more durable than a zip case (which breaks on impact). The ORB media case is a pliable plastic with ribbing to hold the media away from the sides.
--Doug
Drop a Zip disk and not much may happen... Ever notice how the Zip disk media is very thin and, well, floppy? the whole thing doesn't weigh much.
A Jaz disk (as well as the ORB I'm willing to bet) are heavy compared to the zip disks and have several hard disk platters inside... They are supposedly able to handle drops from a few feet off the ground, but I wouldn't want to test it. I just hope that the ORB drives are a little more reliable than my Jaz... people have reported having 5 Jaz drives go bad in a year (taking disks and data with them each time...)and personally, I've already had 2 Jaz drives die on me.
Anyway, my point is, heavier things usually take more falling damage, and the mechanisms inside the Jaz disks and drives (haven't seen an ORB disk yet)seem to be more prone to breaking.
JUST BE MORE CAREFUL WITH THEM.
Look at it this way:
would you rather have a very slow 100 MB disk that you could throw around for $15,
or a hard-drive speed 2160 MB disk (that you'd have to take a little better care of) for $30?
USB is 12 mbps, not Mbps. Big difference (factor of 8)
No, USB is in fact 12 Mbps (12 Megabits per second). What it is not would be 12 MBps (12 Megabytes per second).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by Mr. Assembly:
DVD RAM is 5+ Gigs while the orb is only 2+, also DVD RAMs are dropping in price. The only advantage to the orb is transfer rate...
Cool, orb drives are shipping, pigs are flying and the cows came home.
This is a highly improbable week end.
Your comments are quite valid but let me lend some advice to anyone considering buying a parallel-port version of any peripheral ...
...
...
DON'T DO IT.
The parallel port SUCKS, especially for high-speed transfers like these drives provide.
The best you can get is like 2 megabit (NOT megaBYTE) and at that speed your machine becomes completely unusable as 100% of your CPU gets diverted to handling parallel port interrupts
It's really not worth buying a parallel port versions of one of these drives, if you ask me
Well, there are multiple things one might want from a mass-storage device. USB is useful for transferring data to a machine that doesn't have an orb drive. But USB would make it no more useful than a CD-R, which can make much more portable/sharable/cheaper CD-Rs. What you want is some way to get the full speed of the drive, yet the ability to transfer it to another system as needed. Sounds like what is really wanted is a SCSI->USB converter, so you could take a SCSI drive and plug it into USB.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You need to read more, then post. ~30$
twice the price of a zip, but well under anything else that size.
I want one.
dave
Yes it did. about $30
"In true sound..." -Agents of Good Root
And the Mac, too. I'd buy one, if I didn't already have a 1GB Jaz.
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
I've dropped hard drives down flights of stairs with no negative repercussions.
:)
But then, I always was lucky as hell.
Disks are supposed to retail for $29.95 US or $30 to you and me.
So how long before linux support?
What do you despise? By this are you truly known.
You plan on dropping it to the floor?
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
We need to make sure this works with Linux. I'd be the EIDE and the SCSI versions will work out of the box, but the parallel will probably require some reverse engineering. No matter, I already have a Zip disk on the parallel port; the internal EIDE would work fine for me. All I want to make sure is that I can get enough disks so that even if they go out of business (they are a startup, no?), I can still utilize the drive.
Very exciting stuff....
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Did you go to their page? They are planning parallel, internal EIDE (which has supposedly shipped) and internal and external SCSI versions. Nowhere do they mention USB or Firewire versions.
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
I wouldn't carry ORB disks around like that anyways...that's what Zip disks are for :-)
--
Aaron Gaudio
"The fool finds ignorance all around him.
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
The latest Seagate disk have transfer rates ranging up to 308 Mbit/s.
No, I most certainly did not pull them out of any part of my anatomy.
If you'd bother to actually read what I posted before you decide to spout off, and maybe even think about it for a moment (yes, I know, that's asking an awful lot), you would have noticed that:
So please crawl back under whatever rock you came from.
I have an ~100GB archive (50 DATs) and I'd
love to find an alternative to my DAT robot.
The problems with the DAT are:
1) Slow (~ 300KB/s average in my case)
2) Linear (multi minutes seek time)
3) Unrealiable (I haven't lost data yet, but
often experience wierd behavoirs)
HOWEVER, I typically pay ~$3 par tape which
translate to $1.5/GB. I have yet to find anything
to beat that.
I wanted one of these cheap 2GB external drives like 2 years ago when I first read about them at macweek.com.
Now instead I can look forward to cheaper quantity with DVD-RAM like the cheapie from Creative (there's another good SCSI model from La Cie electronics also).
Open standard formats are good. Anyone want to argue how expensive ZIP and JAZ disks are when compared to blank CD-RW? Iomega still tightly controls prices for Zip disks.
Too bad... I'd like to see SOMETHING replace the "floppy".
Apple has secured a large volume of DVD-RAM and will be pushing it as "the" recordable media for the Macintosh platform. About time...
BCS Online
Damn, I want one now! Have to be patient, paycheck comes next week.
-chad
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
I mean it IS a cheap medium and could hold a lot of MP3s... It could even hold 3 full audio CDs in binary form. (More if they are less than 75 minutes each...)
It would also be great for a car MP3 player.
M.
It's not my my words....hince the quotes. That site was linked off of www.slashdot.org and pissed
a lot of people off when they followed the link and couldn't browse back to the article they
were reading. I was just forwarding someone else's comments about the site to you in
the hopes you would take it as constructive critism and change the site's design.
I hope you don't handle all your client relations with this kind of childish un-professionalism.
And yes, this too will be posted to slashdot for another couple thousand un-educated poor
english speaking computer professionals to consider.
Regards,
Scott McDonald
Admin@MyLink.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Cannon
To: Scott McDonald
Date: Friday, February 12, 1999 7:53 PM
Subject: Re:
>That's what I like. A really constructive bit of input. You're english
>teacher would be proud.
>
>Good luck in life.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott McDonald
>To: 'mediamasters@mediaville.com'
>Date: Friday, February 12, 1999 4:34 PM
>
>
>>
>>www.castlewoodsystems.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Amen?..
>>
>>"
>>That's one of those sorry assed garlic breathed web sites that tries to
>take control of your browser and refuses to let you leave.
>>
>>Be sure to register your displeasure with their web master.
>>"
>>
>>
>
>
It's not my my words....hince the quotes. That site was linked off of www.slashdot.org and pissed
a lot of people off when they followed the link and couldn't browse back to the article they
were reading. I was just forwarding someone else's comments about the site to you in
the hopes you would take it as constructive critisism and change the site's design.
I hope you don't handle all your client relations with this kind of childish un-professionalism.
And yes, this too will be posted to slashdot for another couple thousand un-educated poor
english speaking computer professionals to consider.
Regards,
Scott McDonald
Admin@MyLink.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Cannon
To: Scott McDonald
Date: Friday, February 12, 1999 7:53 PM
Subject: Re:
>That's what I like. A really constructive bit of input. You're english
>teacher would be proud.
>
>Good luck in life.
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott McDonald
>To: 'mediamasters@mediaville.com'
>Date: Friday, February 12, 1999 4:34 PM
>
>
>>
>>www.castlewoodsystems.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Amen?..
>>
>>"
>>That's one of those sorry assed garlic breathed web sites that tries to
>take control of your browser and refuses to let you leave.
>>
>>Be sure to register your displeasure with their web master.
>>"
>>
>>
>
>
Found these guys on Pricewatch. Called 'em up and they said they had some, but had already sold out. Maybe this thing is for real after all.
http://sales.bearkan.com/bcs
EIDE only.
The link worked. The media are 29.95. When will Linux suport this is the better question. They claim support for Windows, Mac, OS/2.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Castlewood claim an MTBF 50% better than the competition. From my experiences with the IOMEGA equivalent, that means they should last about 3 months. I don't know how IOMEGA can keep handing out new replacement drives and stay in business. Has anyone seen a JAZ get through its warranty period (out of the box, and in use, that is)?
Yuck... USB? Not exactly the kind of speed one wants to talk to a 2.2 gig storage mechanism...
Oops, they're 2.2GB, not 1GB, so that's 200+4*30=320, which compares pretty decently with a 10GB harddrive, and it's portable media.
I tried to read their web page. Broken links
and dead java, right and left. Tried to write
postmaster and webmaster. Both bounced, with
cutesy error messages. Looked up their site with
whois, sent messages there. Bounced.
So all the glitz works, but none of the basics.
And they're claiming 300,000hr MTBF on a tech
that won't ship until 3rd quarter 1999.
Right. Forget this one, folks.