MARKET RESEARCHERS PREDICT TREMENDOUS GROWTH, INDUSTRY STANDARDIZATION FOR
FLOPICAL PRODUCTS

Introduced just two years ago, the 21MB Floptical disk drive and media are
rapidly becoming the technology standard for the very high capacity disk
drive market segment. Prominent market researchers Disk/Trend, Dataquest,
and Magnetic Media Information Services (MMIS) have all published reports
predicting the market for Floptical products will continue to grow. 

Disk/Trend Inc. forecasted an explosive growth in the worldwide market hr
Floptical products to an estimated $208 million by 1994. The report
predicted that as significant volumes start moving through the
distribution channel product shipments will increase to 13 million units
in 1994.

In a recently released Dataquest Alert report, analyst Julie Ruiz said,
"...the Floptical Technology Association (FIA), is creating an awareness
of the technology as well as taking steps to make the technology available
to more users."

This continues to reflect Dataquest's support of Floptical technology. In a
Dataquest Perspective, analyst Robert R. Gaskin said, "...members of the
(FTA)...have set some sort of record for drawing attention to their cause.
All the sound and fury appear to be having the desired effect, which is
the emergence of the Floptical design as the de facto standard...The
consortium promoting this standard is appearing ever stronger as time goes
on, and it is now in a position to ship volumes of the product and cement
is position in the marketplace."

Finally, in a report on storage technologies, MMIS concluded that the very
high capacity diskette, and "especially the Floptical version, has a good
chance of becoming the tc facto standard for 'above 2.88MB' diskette
drives and media."

WHERE TO BUY FLOPTICAL PRODUCTS

A wealth of supporting products including drives, media, host adapters,
subsystems and software drivers are available worldwide from the two dozen
FIA member companies.

Computer superstores Bizmart, Comp/USA, Computerware, Frys Electronics, PC
Warehouse and several others carry Floptical drives, media and subsystems.
Floptical products are also available through mail order catalogs such as
the Micro/MacWarehouse, UARCO, and PC/Mac Connection. Major distributors,
including Arrow Electronics, Bell Micro, Computer Brokers of Canada,
Ingram Micro, Merisel and Technology Distributors, are other good sources
for Floptical products.

WHAT IS FLOPTICAL TECHNOLOGY?

As you move up from 1.44MB floppies to higher capacity storage, 21MB
Floptical technology will be your next disk drive. Floptical technology
was developed to provide solutions for storage problems of small systems
such as portables and laptops, and to provide alternatives for the new
desktop user and for those replacing their 5.25-inch drives.

Floptial disk drive technology is a combination of optical and magnetic
recording technologies used to achieve very high capacity 3.5-inch floppy
diskette data storage. The 21MB Floptical drives feature downward read and
write compatibility with conventional 720Kbyte and 1.44MB diskettes. A
single Floptical diskette has the storage capacity of fourteen 1.44MB
diskettes.

Floptical disk drives are well-suited to applications that require I/O,
near-line and high-capacity storage, such as graphics, CAD/CAM/CAE,
multimedia and imaging. Floptical disk drives can also be used for
incremental backup.

BROAD RANGE OF FLOPTICAL PRODUCTS FOR MOST POPULAR PLATFORMS

Desktop, laptop and notebook computer users can all enjoy the benefits of
internal external and parallel port Floptical drives. A wide variety of
Floptical products are available for the most popular platforms including
SCSI, Microchannel ISA, EISA, ESDI, ant IDE PC-compatible systems.
Macintosh, Amiga and NeXT computers are also supported, as well as H-P,
Silicon Graphics and Sun workstations. Products include disk drives, host
adapters, diskettes and subsystems from over twenty vendors.

MICROSOFT'S NEW WINDOWS NT SUPPORTS FLOPTICAL DISKETTES

Watch for the retail version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system
with driver support for Floptical diskette technology.

Steve Timm, technical evangelist for Storage for Microsoft's Systems
Marketing Group, said, "Windows N r will require between 12MB and 16MB of
memory, plus about 200MB of hard disk space. Using Floptical technology
for enhanced on-line storage solves the problem of limited disk space
without sacrificing compatibility with the user's library of 1.44MB
floppies."

Hewlett-Packard, Maynard Support Floptical Technology for PA-RISC
Workstations

Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will support 21MB Floptical technology as
the high capacity removable storage solution for its PA-RISC workstations.
Under an agreement coordinated by 3M, H-P will develop the driver software
required for compatibility with the H-P Apollo 9000 Series 700 workstation
family, and peripherals manufacturer Maynard Electronics will manufacture
and market an external Floptical subsystem as the first supplier to the
H-P market.

Mike A. Gallup, worldwide marketing manager for H-Ps Workstation Systems
Group, said, "H-P regards the 21MB Floptical diskette technology to be a
superior solution for high-capacity floppy diskettes, based on
affordability, compatibility and performance. The pairing of 21MB
technology with the high performance Series 700 family will provide users
with an even more powerful, versatile tool for both commercial and
engineering applications."

dB-CART FLOPTICAL BROADCAST DISKETTE PREMIERES AT NAB

A new alternative to the cart deck is being introduced at the giant
National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas by
Digital Broadcast Associates. The company has developed dB-Cart", a
self-contained digital audio source machine for the broadcast industry
which uses 1.44MB floppy and 21MB Floptical diskettes to store music and
programming.

"Our new Floptical broadcast diskettes will store a mind-boggling 10 plus
minutes of full-bandwidth stereo (compared to 70 seconds on a floppy) and
costs little more than a good NAB tape cart," said company founder Ron
DeBly. "Floptical technology has enabled us to develop a simple-to-operate
dB Cart with unparalleled reliability and unsurpassed audio quality."

The dB-Cart was developed as an alternative to the low audio quality, high
maintenance analog tape decks used to store radio commercials, television
voice-over announcements, and much of the music heard on the radio today.

The Floptical Technology Association
21710 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 220, Cupertino, CA 95014
408-446-0407;  fax: 408-446-0450

  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
  |   From the America Online - New Product Information Services  |
  +===============================================================+
  | This information was processed from data provided by the      |
  | above mentioned company. For additional details, contact the  |
  | company at the address or telephone number indicated above.   |
  |    All submissions for this service should be addressed to    |
  |   BAKER ENTERPRISES, 20 Ferro Drive, Sewell, NJ 08080 U.S.A.  |
  +---------------------------------------------------------------+
