*** New floppy disk outperforms most hard disks ***

This week MEGO Industries Massive Storage Division unveiled a new floppy disk drive that features data transfer rates superior to those of most hard disk drives. Called the MegaFlop-1000, it will soon be available for most personal computers.

Hoyst Petard, spokesperson for MEGO Industries, explains how this technological marvel was accomplished: "We wanted to create a floppy disk drive that would combine transfer rates equal to or better than the best PC hard disks with the convenience of removable media and the low cost of floppy disks--and we succeeded.

"One of the reasons that hard disks offer transfer rates so much higher than those of floppy disks is the much higher velocity of the media surface passing the drive head. Initially, we tried increasing the rotational speed of the disks from 300 RPM to 3,000,000 RPM, but the resulting force of 100,000,000 gravities at the edge of the media surface proved too great for most 5-1/4" floppies, causing them to break apart, ejecting bits of magnetic media out the drive slot at speeds great enough to punch holes through walls and, in one case, our neighbor's cat Mittens.

"Nonetheless, these experiments pointed us in the right direction--since our only real limitation was the structural strength of the disks and the radial force on the disk edge is proportional to the square of the rotational velocity--but only to the first power of the diameter--our initial difficulties and two quarts of tequila convinced us that what we needed was a larger disk surface. To get the same performance that our earlier model provided, however briefly, we determined that a disk diameter of approximately two kilometers would be required, a size that provided us with ample room for placing exponentially tapered steel reinforcement girders radially on the disk.

"Initial experiments produced results that were unequivocably so-so. While the transfer rates did live up to our expectations, winds exceeding 60,000 miles per hour blowing from any holes in the drive housing entirely flattened two small towns and toppled five apartment complexes. Additionally, the steel reinforcement of the disk surface increased the weight of each disk to 35,000 tons, which meant that a box of ten would not fit into a standard retail display. Finally, and perhaps most critically, the steel reinforcement girders caused the disks not to be floppy anymore, a considerable defect where floppy disks are concerned.

"Eventually, however, we hit upon the perfect solution for all our problems with the drive--instead of rotating the disk, we would move the read/write head! It was a simple matter to use a disk of ordinary magnetic film and place the read/write head on a one-kilometer arm, balanced by an arm of equal mass in the opposite direction. Later, we replaced the counterweight on the second arm with an additional read/write head, thus doubling the effective transfer rate. With rotational speeds of only 300 RPM we achieved transfer rates in excess of 2.5 Gigabits/sec and with standard floppy disk storage densities we could store up to 100,000 gigabytes on a single, inexpensive disk. Finnally, by increasing the quantity of lubricating oil used on the worm-gear head positioning drive, we were even able to get the average access time below fifteen minutes."

MEGO Industries Massive Storage Division has already begun production of the MegaFlop-1000 and expects to begin shipping this quarter. In its standard configuration, the drive is powered by its own plutonium-fired breeder reactor constructed directly on the controller card, and, for PC users who aren't licensed for their own nuclear reactor, coal-fired and geothermal models are also available.

"At MEGO Industries, we make your current problems look small."

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