Milpitas, California-based System Industries Inc has introduced a range of tape and optical subsystems for attachment to Digital Equipment Corp’s SSI storage architecture. The new SIDI – System Industries DSSI Interconnect – subsystems include the SIDI/Laser’s Edge. This is a multi-gigabyte erasable optical jukebox subsystem for connection to the DSSI. It requires no drivers, patches or layered software and appears to the host as a standard rotating disk. It enables multiple platters to be mounted together as bound volume sets and simultaneously mounted and accessed for on-line data archival applications. The SIDI/SI8500D is an 8mm tape for the DSSI which provides 5Gb of storage capacity that can be increased with optional compression. Front-panel displays provide detailed information on tape operation. Subsystems are offered in rackmount, pedestal and tabletop configurations. The SIDI subsystems include installation and a one-year warranty. SIDI/Laser’s Edge subsystem provides 33Gb of capacity costs $70,150, the SIDI/SI8500D subsystems from $11,500 including data compression.
