🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1ir5f6INN8ql@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> paladin@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Robin Yang) writes:
>     Sony recently introduced a new generation of music compact disks--2.5"
>in diameter with the same playing time as a normal CD.  The key differences
>other than size are its caddy (it looks like a smaller version of a 3.5"
>floppy disk) and re-writability--more than one million times per bit.  The
>technology is still new so they go for $750, with prerecorded disks $16 and
>recordable ones $20 or so. 
>     I'm curious how adaptable MD's will be to pc's.  On the surface it sounds
>like they could replace current CD-ROM technology.  Certianly the rewritability
>will be greatly appreciated.  Then again flopticals are only 21 mb on a 3.5"
>optical disks.  Hmm...

Well, as far as price goes, it'll drop if and when it catches on.
Remember that the orignal CD players were about $500.  And read-only
MD players run about that price today...

The next question is that of capacity.  If the MD player is at CD
quality, it will record at about 44,000 16-bit samples per second.  I
believe the time-limit of a MD is 74 minutes.  This yields 44,000 x 74
x 60 = 195360000 or 186MW or 372MB.  This is unformatted, of course.

Now, comes the issue of speed.  Since the unit is meant to record live
audio, it must be able to record at least 44,000 16-bit samples per
second.  This comes up to 88,000 bytes per second, or 85K per second.
A slow transfer rate, when compared to hard drives, but fast when
compared to floppies.  As for seek time, who knows.  That much can't
be derived from it's performance as an audio player.

Naturally, the specs may be different from these, but one can expect
these to be a minimum if it is truly a CD-quality recorder.



-- 
  |)  David Charlap          | .signature confiscated by FBI due to
 /|_  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu | an ongoing investigation into the
((|,)                        | source of these .signature virusses
 ~|~