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Hardware

ORB drives are claimed to be shipping 77

Posted by sengan from the better-late-than-never dept.
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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ORB drives are claimed to be shipping More

ORB drives are claimed to be shipping

Comments Filter:
  • 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).
  • 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.

  • Disk cost (Score:1)

    by dcp ( 1250 )
    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?
  • You plan on dropping it to the floor?
    --
    Aaron Gaudio
    "The fool finds ignorance all around him.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • Ever used some of those new DVD-ROm drives. they read just as fast as a hard drive.
    No, they don't even come close. The drive on my desktop machine isn't the latest thing Seagate makes, but it has a raw transfer rate (from the heads) of 137 to 240 Mbit/s. The newest DVD-ROM drives have a raw transfer rate (peak) of under 55 Mbit/s.

    The latest Seagate disk have transfer rates ranging up to 308 Mbit/s.

  • You pulled those numbers out of your Ass
    I see that Slashdot still lets just any idiot post here.

    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:

    1. Those numbers were very explicitly given in megabits per second, not megabytes per second.
    2. The numbers were for the raw transfer rate from the media to the heads (inside the drive), not across the bus.
    3. The numbers came from the manufacturers specifications for the drives

    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 [bearkan.com]

    Damn, I want one now! Have to be patient, paycheck comes next week.

    -chad [chadsdomain.com]
  • 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.

  • I love articles like that that just leave you with a link and nothing else. GRRR! Oh well, I went to the site and took a peek at it. Apparently ORB is a 2.2GB capacity removeable media device that costs $200. It didn't say how much the media costs, however. I want to know that.

    Cheers,
    Joshua.

  • 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, (Score:1)

    by Fizgig ( 16368 )
    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.

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