jlowry@bbnccv.UUCP (John Lowry) (12/11/85)
This is a report on my good experience with Express Systems. You have probably seen their advertisments in DDJ or Byte. They offer a hard disk kit (10Mb) for $395. The original order was sent via UPS and arrived in about a week. The instructions were clear and I had no trouble installing the drive and controller. The controller was a DTC and the drive a Microscience 10Mb. Unfortunately, the controller was bad, fried itself in about 20 minutes. The staff at their telephone number were very responsive and helpful, and I had my new controller via 2nd day air. Again there were problems, and again they were very helpful. I sent back the whole kit, and got a new one via 2nd day air that works fine. I have a very old PC, and ordered a new power supply from them which is very noisy, but the drive is nice and quiet. For $395 you get: o DTC controller (able to take a second drive) o internal half-height 10Mb Microscience - with either full template or half template and half bezel o Manual on installation, operation, warranty, diagnostics. o A diskette containing: A new FORMAT.COM (a la DOS2.X but "better") HDINIT (for those with old BIOS ROMS) BBSAVE ( to record sectors marked bad already before reformat) BBRESTOR ( to write those sectors back after reformat) BADBLOCK ( to find new bad sectors. takes approx 45 minutes) And all of the above for the AT (DOS 3.1) The disk comes preformatted with DOS 2.1 sys and command.com (PC) or DOS 3.1 sys and command.com (AT). They also support the Compaq. All in all I am very pleased. In the future I intend to order their tape streamer and I will let you know how that works out. Too bad about the power supply. If anyone can let me know of a nice QUIET power supply, please do. This ringing in my ears is annoying everyone. John Lowry jlowry@bbnz.arpa jlowry@bbnccv.arpa