LS-120: The 90s Super Floppy That Flopped

Video Description

Among the different disk formats battling for attention in the 1990s, the LS-120 SuperDisk looked like it could be the true successor to the floppy...but ended up going nowhere. Sources: "Insite's Floptical Drive to Increase Storage Capacity," InfoWorld, August 15, 1988. "Floptical Disk Drive Delivers 21MB of Storage," PC Magazine, May 26, 1992. Insight floptical drive photo: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/first-version-insite-i325vm-floptical-1861732315 3M floptical disk photo: https://www.podatkovnimediji.com/1991/04/10/floptical "486 Group to Discuss High-Density Drives," InfoWorld, April 3, 1989. "Iomega's Floptical Drive: 21MB on One Disk," PC Magazine, June 29, 2993. "High-Capacity Floppies Are Drives of the Future," InfoWorld, September 12, 1988. "Is Iomega's Zip Tomorrow's Floppy Disk Drive?" PC Magazine, June 27, 1995. "Vendors vie for floppy territory," Computerworld, July 8, 1996. "New Superfloppy Contender," PC Magazine, October 6, 1998. Caleb UHD144 disk photo: https://obsoletemedia.org/caleb-uhd144/it-disk-with-cover Boxed Caleb UHD144 drive photo: @foone on Twitter "Caleb Technology Releases Monster Floppy," Computerworld, April 3, 2000. "Sony and Fuji add third high-capacity drive to the fray," InfoWorld, October 27, 1997. Sony HiFD disk photo: https://obsoletemedia.org/hifd Fuji HiFD disk photos: https://newsbeezer.com/japaneng/next-generation-floppy-disk-hifd-which-was-delayed-for-a-long-time-sweet-memories-file033-engadget-japanese-version "Floppy Disk Drives," PC Magazine, March 9, 1999. "Sony's 200MB Floppy Disk Drive," PC Magazine, May 4, 1999. "Digital Point & Shoots," American Photo, July-August 2000. Panasonic PV-SD5000 photo: https://www.ebay.com/itm/125378568476 "Inside Track," PC Magazine, February 23, 1999. LS-240 drive photos: https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/q1051530662 00:00 - Introduction 00:30 - Space battles 01:14 - The floptical option 02:33 - Good technology, bad implementation 03:03 - The launch of a super disk 03:35 - A battle on two fronts 06:36 - A glimmer of hope 09:23 - SuperDisk, take 2 10:07 - If not for Zip... ----------------------------------------­------------------------------------- Please consider supporting my work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thisdoesnotcompute Follow me on Twitter and Instagram! @thisdoesnotcomp ----------------------------------------­------------------------------------- Music by Epidemic Sound (https://www.epidemicsound.com). Intro music by BoxCat Games (https://freemusicarchive.org/music/BoxCat_Games).