Insite licensed the floptical technology to a number of companies, including
Matsushita,
Iomega,
Maxell/Hitachi and others. A number of these companies later formed the
Floptical Technology Association, or
FTA, to try to have the format adopted as a replacement of standard floppy disks. Around 70,000 Insite Flopticals are believed to have been sold worldwide in the product's lifetime.
Silicon Graphics used them in their
SGI Indigo and
SGI Indy series of
computer workstations. It was also reported that
Commodore International had selected the Insite Floptical for its
Amiga 3000. However, this did not take place, and while Flopticals were installed in many Amiga systems, they were sold by either Insite, TTR Development or Digital Micronics (DMI), and not bundled by
Commodore. Iomega licensed the Floptical technology as early as 1989 and produced a compatible drive known as the
Insider. A few years later, a number of other companies introduced Floptical-like but incompatible systems: Iomega introduced their own
ZIP-100 system storing 100 MB in 1994, which would go on to sell into the tens of millions. Later versions would increase the capacity to 250 and 750 MB. These had the disadvantage of not being able to read or write normal floppies, which generally required a second drive to be available. Another similar system was
Imation's
LS‑120 SuperDisk in 1996. The LS-120 stored 120 MB of data while retaining the ability to work with normal -inch disks, interfacing as a standard floppy for better compatibility. A later
LS-240 version would store up to 240 MB. A smaller competitor was the almost unknown
Caleb UHD144 in 1997. Their primary advantage was the low cost of their disks. Since 1998,
Sony also tried their own Floptical-based format, the
Sony HiFD, but quality control problems ruined its reputation. The first version could store 150 MB, but it was soon replaced by a 200 MB version. There was serious consideration that one of these systems would succeed where the Floptical failed and replace the standard floppy disk outright, but the rapid introduction of writable
CD-ROM systems in the early 2000s made the market disappear. == Operating system support ==