ear@duke.UUCP (Eric A. Raymond) (02/08/86)
Three questions: I am interested in buying a 20M hard disk for my PC-Compatible. Any suggestions? I've noticed a number of ads for disk & controller kits for around $450 from various mail order houses. Should I be wary of these budget deals? Will they end up costing more in the long run? What about ads in which no brand name is given? What about Seagate drives (i.e. the 225)? Are there any problems with booting up from the hard disk? What software (i.e. installation and formatting) is available? I am also interested in buying a modem. Are there any differences between the high priced brand names (i.e. Hayes) and the other brands (i.e. Anchor, Smarteam). What features do you find useful in a modem? What features are useless? Is it worthwhile to consider a 2400 baud modem? Finally, what's going on with DOS. I've heard that IBM and Microsoft will introduce different versions of PC/MS-DOS. IBM's will eventually go to TopView and MSoft will go to windows. Is this true? If so, what effect will this have on the IBM-Compatible market? (i.e. PCDOS uses ROM calls in BASICA and BASIC) When are the new versions coming out and what will be the differences with the old versions? If I am not interested in networking, does it pay to upgrade? Thanx in advance... -- UUCP: ...decvax!mcnc!duke!ear
nather@utastro.UUCP (Ed Nather) (02/09/86)
In article <6891@duke.UUCP>, ear@duke.UUCP (Eric A. Raymond) writes: > I am interested in buying a 20M hard disk for my PC-Compatible. > Any suggestions? I've noticed a number of ads for disk & controller > kits for around $450 from various mail order houses. Should I be wary > of these budget deals? Will they end up costing more in the long run? > What about ads in which no brand name is given? What about Seagate > drives (i.e. the 225)? Are there any problems with booting up from > the hard disk? What software (i.e. installation and formatting) is > available? > Various mail-order houses handle hard disks differently, have different brands at different times, etc. I'd strongly recommend a phone call -- it's a small investment that can save you a lot later. We have two big outfits in Austin, and have bought hard disks from both. At various times I've gotten disks by Microscience, Tulin, Tandon and CMI from Compuadd locally. No troubles with any except the CMI, which trashed itself and killed 2 weeks work about 2 weeks after I got it. (What? Back up a *new* disk? You must be kidding ...). Compuadd was gracious enough to promise a refund and took it back -- but couldn't replace it with another brand, since they only have CMI disks at the moment. [Guess what happened to all the 20MB disks IBM didn't want to buy?] PC's Limited presently is selling Seagate 20MB disks with controller and software for $469. I'm using one now, and it's fine. One caution: they do the low-level formatting themselves, to make sure it works OK, but are using DOS 2.x to do it. If you use the DOS 3.x Format program on it, you will end up with 8K minimum file sizes. If you are using DOS 3.x you should first REMOVE THE DOS PARTITION with your "Fdisk" program, and re- establish it. 3.x Format will then give you 2K minimum file sizes ... much milder. -- Ed Nather Astronomy Dept, U of Texas @ Austin {allegra,ihnp4}!{noao,ut-sally}!utastro!nather nather@astro.UTEXAS.EDU