Iomega Bernoulli Box 20+20 (A220H)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 1 Jul 2010 at 12:29, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   For a time about ten years ago, the 5.25" Bernoulli drives were
> appearing at scrappers by the hundreds.  I really regret not having
> grabbed a drive or two.  They'd be very handy now for PDP-11 hacking.

Even the 5.25" units were built like tanks.  I still have a dual 90MB 
unit here that occasionally sees use.  The largest made was, what, 
230MB?  

I think the thing that doomed them was the price--they weren't cheap 
and the bytes-per-buck got to be too low for competition. 

 The same with MO drives probably holds.  I may still have a Pinnacle 
Apex 4.3GB drive here somewhere.  In addition to being somewhat 
delicate, it was very expensive when compared to a standard IDE 
drive.

I don't consider the later cheap removable-media drives like Zip, 
Jaz, Sparq... to be in the same reliability category as the 
Bernoullis.  It's a shame that the technology was abandoned.

--Chuck