From: Tape

An article in Computer Tech Review says that Sony has announced a 25GB
native 3MB/sec 3.5" 8mm drive based on the same media technology they
developed for Exabyte's mammoth.

At this point (June 10, 1996), opinions in the newsgroup differ as to
whether or not the _media_ is compatible with Exabyte's Mammoth,
though everybody agrees that SDV-300 will not be read or write
compatible with Mammoth or earlier Exabytes.

Sony's new drive does look impressive. The information that I have
says that production shipments begin this summer (late July for
initial shipments) for units without the data compression feature. 
That would be 25GB native capacity @ 3MB/sec. Drives with compression
will ship in 4Q96, for a guess, probably October-ish.

The interesting feature is the NIC cartridge that has  positioning
information due out by mid-97 that will eliminate the need to rewind
before unloading the tape and will allow the tape to seek in either
direction on loading.  This is a flash chip built into the cartridge
itself.

The SDX-300C is apparently one model in this line, already shipping in 
some autochangers.  No flash index chip yet. (rdv,96/11/4)

(Jeff Johnson (jeff@wsm.com), Bob Covey (rkcovey@aol.com) and others,
1996/6/10)