gino@voder.UUCP (Gino Bloch) (03/05/85)
[fodder]
I promised a report on the Irwin streamer tape drive that I ordered from
Micro Products (Huntington Beach, CA) that advertise in Byte.
This is a 10 MByte tape cartridge device with the form factor of a
half-height 5-1/4" floppy, and their price is $500.
It seems to work - that is, I've done a mirror image tape dump from
my Compaq (with after-market 10MB Winchester), and the program reported
successful verification. I have not tried to restore my disk from the
tape - that experiment will have to wait until I have backed up to an
alternate medium, unless I find that I HAVE to restore. I've also used
the file-by-file S/W to write and view data, their exerciser package to
verify the operation of the drive, and (sort of by mistake - see below)
the servo-write and formatting package too, all successfully.
The negatives are these:
Noisy - 99dB (:-)
Slow by some standards - 10 MB written and verified in 18 minutes
The ad implies that the thing comes in a cabinet (though by phone
they made it clear that it didn't)
The ad states that it comes with cables - it didn't
The S/W diskette that came with it was formatted but devoid of files
- I called and they shipped me a good one; however, I ordered
the thing on 3 Feb, and didn't finally have a usable one until
the 27th. However, that sort of error is just Murphy at work;
my only complaint was the time factor - ordered the 3rd,
received the 19th, problem call the 19th, they called back on
the 20th with "It's on the way", received the 27th. There was
also some disorganization in getting info before I ordered
the device. BUT - they were nice about the diskette problem.
Finally: the thing is power hungry. I put in a box with a (minimal &
unregulated) power supply that had worked with a floppy and with a
Winchester (separately!). It acted like it worked, but the exerciser
S/W told me the tapes were unformatted - sometimes. In fact the whole
thing was weird and inconsistent. When I tried to format, it said it
would take 18 min, then ran for 18 sec and quit with a "Formatted OK"
message. But nothing worked then either. The machine was very
inconsistent in its responses to all of the diagnostic and other S/W
that I kept trying. Leaving out hours of details: I eventually
discovered that my Compaq's internal supply turned the drive into an
obedient and consistent machine. So I bought a $20 power supply from
JDR (which is only ~20 mi from home); everything seems to work fine now,
but the setup is in no way UL approved at the moment (care for volts?).
BTW, the tapes apparently were formatted when I started, but all the
inconsistencies made me try to format one - and later the other -
before I finally found (stumbled upon) the real problem.
Thanks to Dan Messinger and Rob Hagens, who mailed me some of their
thoughts. And to everyone, I hope this is informative, even useful ...
--
Gene E. Bloch (...!nsc!voder!gino)
The accidents expressed above are opinions.