MO drives and disks are not as widely advertised in PC-oriented computer magazines as things like Zip and Jaz drives. I suggest you read the adverts in Macintosh magazines. A drive sold for Macintosh use will come with Mac driver software, which can be used on the Amiga with Macintosh emulators like ShapeShifter and Fusion.
A group of MO drive and media manufacturers have created the MO Forum web site
at:
Fujitsu make MO drives and media, including the DynaMO 640SE external SCSI
drive. The only other manufacturer of 640MB 3½" mechanisms is Olympus, as far
as I know. Most 640MB drives sold by other manufacturers use Fujitsu drive
mechanisms. See Fujitsu's web sites at:
The Fujitsu Europe site includes extensive documentation for their drives in PDF format; see the For Programmers section for the URLs.
Philips PDO used to sell the Galaxy MO 640, a rebadged Fujitsu DynaMO 640 unit.
Their current MO 640 is a rebadged Fujitsu DynaMO 640SE. Typically the Philips
drive is slightly cheaper than the functionally identical Fujitsu one. Philips
also sell a 230MB drive, the MO 230. Their web site is at:
Olympus' 230MB drive, the PowerMO 230, is identical to the Philips 230MB drive,
except in a different colour case. Their PowerMO 640 is a 640MB 3½" drive.
Olypmus also sell an interesting product, the "dimo". This allows their digital
cameras to be connected to a PowerMO 230 MO drive for storing images. Their web
site is at:
The Plasmon and Maxoptix web sites contain some general information on optical
storage which may be helpful, as well as information on their product ranges,
which are mainly targetted at professional markets. The URLs are:
LaCie, MaxOptix and Verbatim sell external 640MB 3½" drives, all using Fujitsu
drive mechanisms. The LaCie and Verbatim web sites are at:
Other MO drive manufacturers or OEMs are Canon, Epson, IBM, Mitsubishi,
Pinnacle Micro, Pioneer, Plasmon, Ricoh, Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba. In
particular, free Macintosh MO driver software can be downloaded from the
Pinnacle Micro web site at:
If you have contact/web site information for any other MO drive manufacturers, please contact me.
If you have any Amiga-specific questions, feel free to ask on the Amiga MO mailing list. Companies which sell MO drives will almost certainly not know anything about the Amiga.