[Music]
we all know the capacity of a fat16
ms-dos formatted floppy disk 1.44
megabytes for a high-density and 720
kilobytes for double density for 3.5
lobbies at least it's possible to
squeeze more out of them with specialist
formatting tools and be like but these
are the standard capacities we all know
and love so what if I told you that I
could fit 120 megabytes or even two
hundred and forty megabytes of data onto
this three and a half inch floppy disk
look it even fits in a standard floppy
drive well you've got the remainder of
this video to pick your jaw's up off the
floor because that's exactly what I'm
going to be talking about this is the
max L LS 120 super disk drive to be more
precise it's the box for a Mac so LS 120
super disk drive with the LS standing
for laser servo but its contents
transforms be humble floppy into
something well more useful something
which allows you to plug and save look
all that digital media on the back let's
get into the box first and then we can
discuss in more detail so we've got
drivers for all the operating systems I
care about always handy inside there's a
manual a couple of those magic 120
megabyte discs a parallel connection
cable power adapter a set of non-magical
standard identity disks and the super
disk drive itself the case looks like it
popped open a bit but that shouldn't
affect operation now you can have this
thing lay flat on your desk or use this
plastic mount for vertical positioning I
think we'll go for some vertical action
today conserve some desk space for
additional clutter
so each of these disks has its own
plastic case but otherwise it's almost
identical to a standard three-and-a-half
inch floppy we've got space for a label
a write-protect notch even the access
cover which snaps back into place sure
the design is different to differentiate
it but ever why is it a three and a half
inch disk even weighs the same lots of
lovely information in the manual about
setting up and what's not but let's just
dive straight in I'm going to be using
my Amstrad Integra with Windows 98 to
kick things off the cable plugs straight
ins of a parallel port providing a
pass-through if you had a printer
connected as well this ven plugs into
these super disk drive using a connector
reminiscent of a joystick socket power
cord in the top and we are good to go we
get a green access light on power up and
a reassuring sound so let's install some
drivers whilst that's installing and
rebooting let's cover some history now
be original super disk hardware was
designed by 3m under the amasian brand
who in 1997 licensed for technology
outer companies such as masu Sheeta and
mitsubishi whilst also sold on to the
Maxell brand rather appropriate for 3m
to find three companies beginning with
the letter M the design stemmed from a
project at i/o mega using lasers to go
to a magnetic head allowing for much
greater precision than in mechanical
floppy drives this is known as flop
tackle technology and serves as one of
the last products to really use it
of course I Omega had pretty much
abandoned the project when they released
their own super floppy incarnation the
zip drive in 1994 and so the super disk
was starting on a back foot the world
needed a replacement for the three and a
half inch floppy and this is what 3m and
its licensees hoped for super disk word
servers
now you might notice that me windows 98
boot screen has been here for quite a
while and that's because it's crashed if
we dig in to be Windows Device Manager
we can see that the device halted
Windows and therefore it will never ever
be started again
that's quite a firm commitment from an
operating system isn't here to serve me
rather than the other way round but
super disk control panel tells us that
the driver isn't loaded so clearly
something has gone terribly wrong my
first port of call was to remove these
zip disc drivers but that did nothing
neither did changing the parallel port
communication type or removing and
reinstalling they could be any number of
things so rather than dick about I
brought in my trusty Compaq Presario for
some classic dos 6.22
and windows 3.11 testing instead luckily
we have all the drivers for all these
eventualities and check out that DOS
installation program isn't it just a
rhotic almost a quick reboot and yes we
can see the drivers initializing here
success we have our superest drive setup
as drive D now what we need to do is
navigate to it and voila a 120 megabyte
floppy drive at our disposal marvelous
stuff our old friends check disk returns
125 million nine hundred and fifty eight
thousand one hundred and forty four
bytes of total disk space so we actually
get 125 megabytes on these things
formatted as dos not sure why they don't
advertise it as vets opting to use mebbe
bytes instead I mean we're talking over
three additional floppies here anyway be
far more visually stimulating scan disk
runs pretty quick but actually reports
the drives backup fat as being
inconsistent but were we not let us boot
into Windows and Chuck some flowers
about as we're using windows 3.11 no
additional drivers are necessary
although if you're that way inclined you
can install the supplied double zip
software allowing up to a whopping 240
megabytes on each disk much like drive
space or be more troublesome double
space supplied with dos however it
wouldn't boot in my version of Windows
so would now I thought I'd attempt
copying a cover disc CD on to the super
disk the manual tells us for they can
achieve a continuous transfer rate of
270 kilobytes per second several times
faster than the standard floppy drive
but it didn't take long for further
problems to set in now this unit is
clearly getting old and so it probably
has alignment issues but it only managed
to copy some five megabytes along with a
plethora of lost allocation units before
crashing windows attempt to format each
of these super disks would be funded
format utility also failed which is a
shame but aligns would be success of the
hardware on its release the super disk
wasn't the floppy disk replacement its
manufacturers hoped it to be given be
larger zip disks and drives has been out
for several years already
it had
established itself in Benicia of that
market whilst we ever part was being
served by cd-rom or even writable with
CD drives if you were fortunate enough
whilst of a super disk had the ability
to read and write standard floppy disks
or in the case of my drive fail to read
them it's not like it worked the other
way around and even if you installed a
drive internally via IDE or scuzzy you'd
still likely need to retain your
standard drive connected to a floppy
interface acting as the all-important a
drive
although Windows XP would later have the
ability to see a super disk drive as an
A Drive the super disk was faster than
the floppy but even the zip 100 drive
could shift data at about 1.4 megabytes
per second although real-world parallel
connections were a lot slower zip drives
were more established about the same
price and also seemed to be a bit more
dependable of many complaining about the
fragility and reliability issues of be
super disk medium although zip disks
definitely had their fair share of
problems a common issue when pushing
portable storage to the limits as we've
witnessed today but super disk bought on
would be 240 model released in 2001
developed by Matsushita featuring a
spangled USB connection and even
allowing you to store up to 32 megabytes
on a standard floppy disk although it
needed to rewrite the entire disk each
time you changed something
but this was also the same year as we
zip 250 Drive appeared which was
superseded only a year later by being
much faster
zip 750 Drive so although it had some
great intentions super disk it seems was
relegated to a distant memory of the
optical media wilds if struggled on
before being relegated by the almighty
USB Drive but that's not to say it's not
fondly remembered the medium found its
way onto various panasonic digital
cameras and the MIDI keyboards where it
provided much-needed storage capacity
without requiring any more physical
space than a floppy drive an achievement
which shouldn't be devalued and a reason
to admire the super disk in a nostalgic
blaze of withered glory I'll leave you
with the beautiful process of applying a
fresh label to one of the floppy disks
hmm he can't be fresh labels thanks for
watching this video on be super dis
bears some other videos that might
interest you were here you can support
me through patreon or subscribe or give
the video a thumbs up or down it all
helps anyway thanks for watching and
have a great evening
[Music]
you