Imation Corp is teaming up with Panasonic Industrial Co to develop the first SuperDisk drive for the USB bus. SuperDisk, previously known as LS-120, is the 120Mb intended floppy disk replacement that reads legacy 1/44Mb and 720Kb diskettes, supported, among others, by Compaq Computer Corp. The move to USB was spurred in part by Apple Computer Corp’s announcement of the floppy disk-less iMac last week (CI No 3,405), and availability has been set to coincide with the first iMac shipments, expected in August. The iMac has two USB ports for peripherals. The drives will read both PC and Mac formatted floppy disks, and existing SuperDisk diskettes from Imation. A standard USB floppy drive is also expected to be available from Apple for the iMac, but probably as a build-to-order option.
