laser disks and massive cheap storage

[Art Zemon]

harvard!crane crane at harvard.ARPA (Greg Crane) writes:
> What is the actual current state of laser disks out there? Does anybody
> have any first hand experience with them? Who is offering them? How 
> big and how expensive? How slow are the access and transfer rates?
> Any predictions about when they will be ready?

We (FileNet Corporation) build a laser disk storage device
called an OSAR(tm) library -- Optical disk Storage and
Retrieval library.  This is a jukebox type machine holding
up to 64 optical disks and up to four optical disk drives.
Single sided disks hold one gigabyte; double sided hold two
gigabytes.  The capacity of the OSAR library is 128 Gb.
Access time to a mounted disk is four seconds.  Access time
to an unmounted disk is twelve seconds.  Transfer rates are
comparable to that of large hard disk drives.  Prices start
at $85,000 for quantity one.  You can send us your check
now.  Our sales staff can give you a delivery date.

> My specific applications call for massive amounts of on-line storage, and 
> occasional spikes of CPU intensive work (mostly looking up 
> things in inverted indices, but occasional linear searches of
> one to several hundred mbytes of text).

We also build a complete FileNet(tm) Document-Image
Processor which uses up to eight OSAR libraries for
back-end storage.  The system consists of a number of
68010s running Unix and communicating over an Ethernet.
Rather than ASCII terminals, access is via an Integrated
Workstation consisting of a 68010 (running Unix, of course)
and a 20" bit-mapped display, windows, mouse, etc.  The
Document-Image Processor stores images of paper documents
in addition to ASCII textual matter.

I hope this whets your curiosity.  Rather than clutter up
net.unix-wizards with more of this, however, write either
to me via electronic mail or to our marketing department
via US Mail:

    FileNet Corporation
    Marketing Department
    1575 Corporate Drive
    Costa Mesa, CA  92626

    (714)966-2344

I wish I had seen your request a week ago.  We just got
done displaying the system at Info 84 in New York and you
could have seen it there.

----------
OSAR and FileNet are trademarks of FileNet Corporation.

-- 
	-- Art Zemon
	   FileNet Corp.
	   ...! {decvax, ihnp4, ucbvax} !trwrb!felix!zemon