klotz@Ucb-Vax.ARPA (12/22/84)
As many of you probably know, pixel corporatoin offered some winchester disk drives at remarkable prices. Well a friend bought one and we started to look for an interface/controller for the beast. We called these people, s-100 , and asked if they had an interface card and they recommended that we buy their DISK 2 controller from Compupro. They assured us that this card was the proper interface for the SA1004. We order the card and at the same time order the manual from Shugart. The card came in about a month ago and the manual came last week. After careful investigation it became apparent that the two did not go together. We called the company and talked to the Technical Manager. He insists that there is only one standard for 8 inch Winchester disk. He has never heard of the SA1000 standard and refused to take the card back since we have had it for over 30 days. We tried to assure him that the card had not be used, in fact it is still in the original wrappers. So we have to eat his mistake. For those of you who may not know, SA1000 is considered by Western digital and Xebec to be the most popular standard for the 8 inch drives, and the DISK 2 is for the Fujitsu drive and the SA4000, which we could neither find the drives of the documentation. The bottom line is that we suggest that no one buy from these people. Meanwhile we are going to collect documentation for the owner of the company to enlighten him/her to the actual standard and the ignorance of the "Technical Manager".