May 15, 1997, Business Wire reports that IBM has announced new
2.5" hard drives with up to 5GB capacity.
Travelstar 5GS:
5.1 GB, 17mm high, 180 g., 4900 RPM, 12.0 ms average seek time,
four platters, ATA-3 interface, 400 G non-operating shock,
512 KB buffer
Travelstar 4GT:
4.0 GB, 12.5mm high, 140 g., 4000 RPM, 13.0 ms average seek time,
3 platters, ATA-3 interface, 600 G non-operating shock, 512 KB
buffer
http://www.storage.ibm.com/
[1997/05/19]
Apr. 1, 1997, Computer Retail Week reports that Ricoh has brought
CD-Rewritable drives to the US market for about $599.00 US retail.
While this is not a "mobile" product, it makes CD-ROMs in laptops
a more useful method of carrying bulk data.
[1997/04/04] revised [1997/11/21]
Mar. 31, 1997, Canada NewsWire reports that Exabyte has added the
Mitsubishi LS-120 Super Floppy drive to their line of "Eagle Nest"
interchangeable plug-in drive device modules. The LS-120 drive
supports 120MB formatted LS-120 diskettes as well as standard
1.44MB and 720KB 3.5" floppies, in competition against Iomega ZIP
format diskettes which are not compatible with standard 3.5"
floppies.
[1997/04/04]
Feb. 24, 1997, Electronic Buyers News reports that Cartesian Data Inc. will
announce a Type 2 PC Card that uses materials in hard drives but without
rotating discs. It uses a vibrating arm over a magnetic film.
[1997/02/25]