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-
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- {subhead} Dream Machine Requests{def}{p}
- Article by Mark Tierno
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- Welcome to what will hopefully be a regular article, where we go over
- possible new features or changes to be included in the next generation
- of our favorite machine. Maybe Amiga Inc will read this and get a few
- ideas, maybe not, but at least there's a place to sound them out. I will
- start this month off with my own ideas, but if any of you out there have
- something you would like to see done to either the hardware or OS for
- the next Amiga, then by all means write in and I'll include it in a
- future edition of this column. And now for the first installment.
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- Disk Drives. Some say the old floppy is dead and that we only need CDs
- and Zips, others say we just need to upgrade to High Density Drives. For
- my part, the following has to be considered before deciding the fate of
- the old floppy.{p}
- 1) Backwards compatibility. Let's face it, there's always going to
- be some double and high density disks out there and they're going to
- need something to be run with. Any solution will have to run them as
- well.{p}
- 2) Reliability. Zip isn't all that reliable. It IS after all a
- series of floppy disk films stacked on top of one another, which runs
- the risk these filmy things bouncing up against one another with a good
- rap on it from someone's finger.{p}
- 3) Capacity. Two megs just ain't cutting it anymore, what with
- continually larger programs and information overload. Something with
- enough capacity yet still portable. Stuff like 1 Gig SyQuest and 2 Gig
- Jazz drives are great for large-scale backup, but too much for normal
- pasing-around disks.
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- The solution? Anyone check out the LS120 lately? 120 megs capacity in a
- standard floppy-sized disk, with only a single floppy platter so you
- don't have the Zip problems, and best of all the drive can take all the
- old double and high density disks. A perfect and obviouss solution. My
- first input for the next gen mahcine would be to have TWO LS120 drives
- as standard, replacements for the floppy drives.
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- And yes, I still think we should have two drives. No matter how much
- people say about only one floppy needed if any at all, having two is
- still good for disk to disk copying, and those times when you're trying
- to compare what's on one disk that isn't on the other or just need to
- shuffle stuff around from one disk to another. The LS120 would be the
- logical and perfect inheritor of the old floppy legacy.
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- Next month, more dreams for Amiga Next Gen.