Maxell Corp of America has officially launched a SuperDisk drive for the notebook market in the US. The SuperDisk format is expected to compete with Iomega Corp’s Zip format as the de facto successor to the 1.44Mb floppy disk. Maxell and Accurite Technologies Inc announced retail availability of their PCMCIA SuperDisk LS-120 drive. In a rather convoluted relationship, the drive itself is manufactured by Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc, using its slimline design for notebooks, has Accurite’s PCMCIA packaging and is being marketed under the Maxell name. It weighs just 10 ounces and can be connected to Type II or Type III PC card slots. The drive requires no additional energy source, as it is powered through the card slots. The product will ship next month and carries a suggested retail price of $300. Each package includes the drive, cable and interface and software drivers. The SuperDisk technology – first announced in March 1996 (CI No 2,865) – offers 120Mb of storage on disks that are read/write backwards compatible with standard 3.5-inch floppy disks. Both of the new drives are compatible with Windows 95, Windows 3.x and DOS. On Friday, Imation Corp and Panasonic Industrial Co announced they’re working together to develop the first SuperDisk drive for the USB bus (CI No 3,407).
