The Super Drive is Older than you think!(ALOT OLDER)

[Macmaniac]

YES I have genuine proof that the Super Drive is very old! The DVD-RW is a later drive in a series of Super Drives! Don't believe me? Have a look at his picture I took today at my Grandparents house! Yes Ladies and Gentlemen the Super Drive on a Mac SE, the Super Drive started out as a Floppy Drive! This has not be retouched in any way(I do not have photoshop) This is the real McCoy!
If you still don't believe me I have more pictures of it!

 

[rainman::|:|]

yeah this is true, but what's the point? The first 3.5" floppy drive that could operate DS-HD (double-sided, high density) was called the superdrive. it was a pain in the ass, because floppy drives before that could store 800k in a format only those drives could read, and these drives store 1.4mb (not exactly, but what the hey)... i used to have an SE with an 800k floppy drive, and to get files transfered from school, i had to copy from a similar drive in one of their older units...

i think it's mostly coincidence that the DVD burning drives are called superdrives... only the name is that old, not the technology...


pnw

 

[GeeYouEye]

Originally posted by paulwhannel
yeah this is true, but what's the point? The first 3.5" floppy drive that could operate DS-HD (double-sided, high density) was called the superdrive. it was a pain in the ass, because floppy drives before that could store 800k in a format only those drives could read, and these drives store 1.4mb (not exactly, but what the hey)... i used to have an SE with an 800k floppy drive, and to get files transfered from school, i had to copy from a similar drive in one of their older units...

i think it's mostly coincidence that the DVD burning drives are called superdrives... only the name is that old, not the technology...


pnw

Exactly. And this isn't the first time anyone's noticed. MacWorld said the same thing shortly after the new Superdrive came out.

 

[TiMacLover]

O my

I have a SE SuperDrive and that is "my baby"

 

[Hemingray]

I believe Apple named the new SuperDrives that for a reason. It's always good to see Apple giving a nod to their old technologies.

 

[mac15]

Its a great drive it does everything you could ever want
but it does it very slow
burning CDs at 8x sucks even at 12x on my combo sucks
but its better than nothing

 

[oldMac]

SuperDrive History

Back in the day when Macs used 800K floppies, PCs could get 720K of data out of the same floppy drive. The reason was the Apple used a variable speed floppy drive made by Sony.

Single speed drives, used by PCs, wasted space on a floppy by turning at the same speed as the drive head moved inward on the platter. As a result, the PC was saving the same amount of data on the outside track as the inside track even though there was much more space on that outside track. The result was 80K of waste (~10%) and a cheaper floppy drive.

Apple went the more expensive route with a variable speed drive that could pack in more data. Apple's drives also had a motor driven eject mechanism.

However, this drive was much more expensive to produce and effectively made Mac floppies incompatible with PCs. Then again, there were very few applications that could share file formats between the Mac and PC at that time, so there's a bit of "chicken vs. egg" in there.

 

[Ensign Paris]

I love the way Apple continute old stuff like this, for instance the compact mac at startup! I want to know what the next startup sound will be like, they will have to change it one day!

Ensign