90mm M.O. Adventures: Part 1 – Acquiring a Drive

In the mid-90s, there was a period when computer shops sold “optical drives”. That seemingly ambiguous name now referred to Magneto-Optical (M.O.) discs and Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) discs which were available in 130mm and 90mm cartridges at a range of capacities. While CD-ROM was already commonplace by then and CD-writers were just about to become affordable, the M.O. technology essentially competed with various super-floppy and floptical formats on the market as removable storage, often considered a “larger floppy disk” or a “removable hard drive”. I wrote about these formats in an overview posting back in 2015 when I obtained a few samples of the media. But one thing I wasn’t able to do was to experience the technology first-hand. But this was soon to change. A Breakthrough By now, you probably know that I’ve been visiting Suruga-ya’s international online shop for a good few years, buying up a range of interesting technology including optical media and other equipment. While I…