Technology
Microdrives used tiny (44 × 34 × 8 mm including protective cover) cartridges containing a 5-metre (200-inch) endless loop of magnetic tape, 1.9 mm wide, driven at 76 cm/second (30 in/second); thus performing a complete circuit in approximately 8 seconds. The cartridges held a minimum of 85 kB when formatted on a ZX Microdrive (exact capacity depended on the number of "bad" sectors found and the precise speed of the Microdrive motor when formatting). The data retrieval rate was 15 kB/s, i.e., 120 kbit/s. It was possible to "expand" the capacity of a fresh microdrive cartridge by formatting it several times. This caused the tape to stretch slightly, increasing the length of the tape loop so that more sectors can be marked out on it. This procedure was widely documented in the Sinclair community magazines of the 1980s.
Unfortunately, the system acquired a reputation for unreliability. The tapes stretched during use (giving them a short life span) eventually rendering the data stored unreadable. Also the "write protection" was software-based so that a computer crash could erase the data on an entire tape in 8 seconds. The cartridges were relatively expensive (initially sold for £4.95 each, later reduced to £1.99). Similar technology was used in other devices, such as the Rotronics Wafadrive, and was sometimes known as a "stringy floppy".
Read more about this topic: ZX Microdrive
Famous quotes containing the word technology:
“One can prove or refute anything at all with words. Soon people will perfect language technology to such an extent that they’ll be proving with mathematical precision that twice two is seven.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Radio put technology into storytelling and made it sick. TV killed it. Then you were locked into somebody else’s sighting of that story. You no longer had the benefit of making that picture for yourself, using your imagination. Storytelling brings back that humanness that we have lost with TV. You talk to children and they don’t hear you. They are television addicts. Mamas bring them home from the hospital and drag them up in front of the set and the great stare-out begins.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“Technology is not an image of the world but a way of operating on reality. The nihilism of technology lies not only in the fact that it is the most perfect expression of the will to power ... but also in the fact that it lacks meaning.”
—Octavio Paz (b. 1914)