a shoebox and initially retailed for US$5000. Corvus sold many stand alone drives whose numbers increased as they became shared over Omninet. This allowed sharing a then-very costly hard drive among multiple inexpensive Apple II computers. An entire office or classroom could thus share a single Omninet-connected Corvus drive. Certain models of the drives offered a tape backup option called "Mirror" to make hard disk backups using a VCR, which was itself a relatively new technology. A standalone version of "Mirror" was also made available. Data was backed up at roughly one megabyte per minute which resulted in five or ten-minute backup times. Tapes could hold up to 73MB. Even though Corvus had a on this technology, several other computer companies later used this technique. A later version of tape backup for the Corvus Omninet was called The Bank. and was a standalone Omninet connected device that used custom backup tape media that were very similar in shape and size to today's DLT tapes. Both the Corvus File Server and The Bank tape backup units were in white plastic housings roughly the size of two stacked reams of paper. Networking In 1980 Corvus came out with the first commercially successful local area network (LAN), called Omninet''. Most Ethernet deployments of the time ran at 3 Mbit/s and cost one or two thousand dollars per computer. Ethernet also used a thick and heavy cable that felt like a lead pipe when bent, which was run in proximity to each computer, often in the ceiling plenum. The weight of the cable was such that injury to workers from ceiling failure and falling cables was a real danger. A transceiver unit was spliced or tapped into the cable for each computer, with an additional AUI cable running from the transceiver to the computer itself. Corvus's Omninet ran at one megabit per second, used twisted pair cables and had a simple add-in card for each computer. The card cost $400 and could be installed by the end user. Cards and operating software were produced for both the Apple II and the IBM PC and XT. At the time, many networking experts said that twisted pair could never work because "the bits would leak off", but it eventually became the de facto standard for wired LANs. Other Omninet devices included the "Utility Server" that was an Omninet connected device that allowed one Parallel printer and