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Table of Contents

• ↓ 90mm M.O. Adventures: Part 1 – Acquiring a Drive
• ↓ A Breakthrough
• ↓ The Unit
• ↓ A Look at Internals
• ↓ Hacking it Back to Life
• ↓ Connected to Host
• ↓ Top Alternatives to goughlui.com

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Content Snippets from goughlui.com

"In the mid-90s, there was a period when computer shops sold “optical drives”. That seemingly ambiguous name now referred to Magneto-Optical (M.O.) discs and Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) discs which were available in 130mm and 90mm cartridges at a range of capacities. While CD-ROM was already commonplace by then and CD-writers were just about to become affordable, the M.O. technology essentially competed with various super-floppy and floptical formats on the market as removable storage, often considered a “larger floppy disk” or a “removable hard drive”."

"I wrote about these formats in an overview posting back in 2015 when I obtained a few samples of the media. But one thing I wasn’t able to do was to experience the technology first-hand. But this was soon to change."

"By now, you probably know that I’ve been visiting Suruga-ya’s international online shop for a good few years, buying up a range of interesting technology including optical media and other equipment. While I have spent a small fortune there and I know the international site is a bit overpriced compared to other alternatives, it is a lot easier to navigate and I still feel I’m getting decent value for money."

"Back at the tail end of 2024, I spotted that Suruga-ya had a good few listings for 90mm (3.5″) M.O. discs of various sizes, but they also had two drives listed too. There was an I-O Data drive of the GigaMO 1.3GB generation listed as not working and not able to recognise any discs and the price was a bit steep. The other was the Olympus TURBO MO miniEX III 640MO (MO643U6S). While there wasn’t much information available, it is a drive that is compatible with 640MB discs and earlier generations (so no 1.3GB/2.6GB GigaMO sadly). It has an onboard cache for faster response times and has a 3000rpm spin-speed according to specifications. Best of all, being a newer model, this one doesn’t require SCSI as it works off USB 2.0 (which should be faster than the disks themselves) and is nicely packaged as an external device requiring just a small power supply."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for goughlui.com:

90mm M.O. Adventures: Part 1 – Acquiring a Drive

A Breakthrough

The Unit

A Look at Internals

Hacking it Back to Life

Connected to Host