temin@ut-sally.UUCP (Aaron Temin) (03/12/85)
I have a Cromemco System 3 running CP/M. Currently it has
a 4FDC controller and a pair of Persci 277 drives (SSSD).
I'm considering an upgrade to some combination of floppy
and hard disk systems. I would like to know if
anyone has experience doing something similar, and what
combinations of software/controllers/drives they have found
particularly useful or useless.
Thanks,
Aaron
{seismo, harvard, ucbvax}!ut-sally!teminjohn%sri-china@sri-tsc.ARPA (John Hight) (03/13/85)
Well, I haven't messed with the System 3 that we had at my old job, but it seems to me that we had nothing but troubles with both the Persci 277 and 299 drives. They were constantly gouging diskettes. In addition, both the 4FDC and 16FDC controllers we had were constantly sent in for repair. I would stay away from any of these items. John Hight SRI International (john@sri-tsc)
jchapman@watcgl.UUCP (john chapman) (03/15/85)
I have a tarbell dd disk controller which ran flawlessly for a year (I switched to a different controller for reasons havinf nothing to do with the tarbell board) and never had a single problem. This was in conjunction with an 8mhz 8086 in both a terminated and unterminated busses at various times). The board handles any combination of single/double density and single/double sided drives. One nice feature is that data transfer can be either by dma or by pio (so it will work in systems with dynamic memory or other dma constraints). Physically the board is of high quality and the documentation is both extensive and clear. I once had the tarbell single density controller and when I had a problem with it the tarbell people were quite helpful (in fact they used to offer a deal whereby if you bought a kit rather than a&t and couldn't get it to work after assembly they would fix it free of charge). It can be found (check byte) for $419 from various mail order houses. John ....!watmath!watcgl
cem@intelca.UUCP (Chuck McManis) (03/25/85)
> > Well, I haven't messed with the System 3 that we had at my old > job, but it seems to me that we had nothing but troubles with both > the Persci 277 and 299 drives. They were constantly gouging diskettes. > In addition, both the 4FDC and 16FDC controllers we had were constantly > sent in for repair. I would stay away from any of these items. > > John Hight > SRI International (john@sri-tsc) I have used a system III with a 16FDC and a persci 299b rather extensively for nearly a year, and in the process developed a cp/m bios for it that put both the drive and the controller though heavy use and have never even had a Read or Write error trap. (Which means no error that wasn't recovered in the 5 retries that the BIOS allows for). As above it is only one persons experience but I have been quite pleased. --Chuck -- - - - D I S C L A I M E R - - - {ihnp4,fortune}!dual\ All opinions expressed herein are my {qantel,idi}-> !intelca!cem own and not those of my employer, my {ucbvax,hao}!hplabs/ friends, or my avocado plant. :-}