Cypress, California-based Most Inc’s senior management has successfully bought out the company from NPC Holding, a US subsidiary of Nakamichi Corp, and Most has just launched what it claims is the highest-capacity 5.25 magneto-optical disk drive on the market. The Jupiter 1 is a half-height drive that stores 2.6Gb of data and uses standard erasable media, Most’s Continuous Composite Write Once or CCW and standard Write Once disks. It is backwards-compatible with 1.3Gb and 650Mb cartridges. In CCW recording and reading, phase-encoded part and standard format part codes are placed into the medium to differentiate a write-once from a rewritable medium. The unique codes are read by the optical drive so that the appropriate drive command set is invoked. The company was originally formed by Nakamichi in 1987 to develop magneto-optical drive technology. In 1993 it acquired the optical products division of Goleta, California-based Applied Magnetics Corp in what was a very controversial deal (CI No 2,111). There had been moves to get the sale blocked on the grounds that the technology was of strategic importance to the US. This July’s buy-out included the optical drive technology, the Colorado Springs, Colorado manufacturing subsidiary, Most Manufacturing Inc, and its marketing and distribution operation, Ocean Microsystems Inc. This makes the company the only US-owned and operated rewritable optical drive company that manufactures in the United States. The Jupiter 1 drive has an average seek time of less than 24 milliseconds and a sustained read transfer rate of 2Mbps says Most. It can be used as an internal or external device and is being pushed as an ideal drive for RAID-type and jukebox storage. The internal unit measures 5.75 by 1.625 by 8.0 and weighs 4.4 lbs. Jupiter 1 is based on the same opto-mechanical assembly technology that was designed and built by Most for use in magneto-optical drives that are extensively used by OEM customers. Although the company refused to name the firms with which it is working, it promises that high-capacity jukeboxes using Most’s 2.6Gb drives will appear within 60 days. Designed for heavy usage, the Jupiter 1 is said have retrieval speeds that approach hard disk random access performance. The company said that initially the drive will have a street price of less than $2,600 but it would cut prices if challenged in the market place. Most, which had revenues of $20m in 1994, said it is positioned for significant growth in 1995.
