amr@rti-sel.UUCP (Alan Roberts) (07/31/85)
I have an IBM Portable PC with dual floppies, and have been wanting to replace one of the floppies with a half-height hard disk for some time. There have been two factors that have prevented me from doing this: lack of a rugged half-height hard disk (I do carry my machine about), and lack of a long slot for a hard disk controller (there is only one long slot free in the basic Portable PC, and I filled that with an AST multifunction card to obtain more memory along with printer and serial ports). This month's Byte seemed to supply the answer: an internal half-height drive that uses a short-slot controller, from Qubie' (page 194). At $600 for drive and controller, the price seems right, and the add says the drive (actually a 3.5" disk) uses plated media. I gave Qubie' a call, and things seemed to get better. Its a 3.5" drive from Tandon, with a 5.25" half-height bezel, provides 20MB FORMATTED, does use plated media, only uses 11W (no startup surge spec. from the salesman I talked to), and the spindle and head both lock on power down, provided the heads have been moved to a landing area (once again according to sales). I was even advised up front that there was a 5 week+ backlog of orders! I'm ready to buy, but would love some confirming information from the net. Can anyone confirm that the Tandon 3.5" hard disk locks both spindle and heads on power down (I would like to know that the head is going to STAY on the landing area, and that the platter is not going to scrub the head, even if the Portable takes a good shake)? Has anyone dealt with Qubie' who would care to comment about the company? Best yet, has anyone bought a PC20 yet??? -- Cheers, Alan Roberts Research Triangle Institute (decvax!mcnc!rti-sel!amr)