johnbu@tektronix.UUCP (01/31/84)
This line intentionally left non-blank. My goal is to add a hard disk (10 Mbyte or so) to an old version (64K system unit) PC. In my brief amount of shopping, several questions come to mind: 1) The prices I've seen used to range from 2,000 to 3,500. Why the extreme variation? Is there really that much differencr in quality? 2) I've recently seen one (I can't remember the manufacturer right now) for 995 for 10 Mbyte. Does this significant price drop represent an associated quality or feature drop? 3) The ideal case would be to get one that would install in the PC system unit. I've heard that one can buy IBM's souped up power supply, a controller board, and the drive and make it all work. Does it really work? What price should I expect?, etc, etc. Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, John Burgess, Tektronix, Inc
bernie@watarts.UUCP (02/03/84)
True, most 10 MB drives are in the $2000+ range. However, I purchased the one advertised a while back at $995 and am quite satisfied with it. I was less than pleased with the company itself, though-- Great Lakes Computer Peripherals took a ridiculously long time to process my order, and when the drive finally arrived (several *months* after I ordered it) I had to travel from Waterloo to Toronto to pick it up because the shipping order was confused. However, the price was extremely good and everything worked as advertised. Note, however, that their name and their price have changed. The drive that was selling for $995 is now $1495 (I suspect they had been losing money on the lower-priced one) and is being sold through Pegasys (sic), a division of Great Lakes Computer Peripherals. Their driver was written by Tall Tree Systems, though it went through enough mods on the part of GLCP that Tall Tree disavows any responsibility for the code. I bought Tall Tree's "Windrive" package and am planning to reconstruct the changes GLCP made. Anyway (to answer your question) the less expensive drives seem to work okay. --Bernie Roehl