info-mac@uw-beaver (12/21/84)
From: Paul R. Johnson <PRJohnson@MIT-XX.ARPA>
We just had a demonstration of General Computer's HyperDrive here at MIT.
They seem to have done a very good job. It is fast. You can
boot off of it. It doesn't die if you try to eject it. You can
copy a file to it from a floppy and copy it back without the
file growing in size. It is organized into "file drawers"
(i.e., virtual floppies) that can be mounted, unmounted, and
created at anytime from a desk accessory. Thus you can be in
the middle of MacPaint, say, and mount a file drawer without
leaving the application.
The drive itself is mounted inside on the back panel. There is
a quiet (I couldn't hear it) variable speed fan that vents out
one of the slanted collection of slots at the top back. They
claim that a Macintosh with 512K and Hyperdrive runs cooler than
a plain Fat Mac.
The way you get one is that you take your Mac to a dealer where
one of two things happens. Either the dealer ships your Mac off
to General Computer for G.C. to make the modifications and ship
it back ("One to two weeks."), or, if your dealer has an Apple
Certified technician, the technician opens your Mac up, removes
the digital board, and ships it to G.C. Once the board has been
modified it is sent back with the disk, fan, and mounting
hardware and the technician puts it all back together. G.C.
expects that some dealers will try to keep some already modified
boards (and other parts of the kit) in stock so the change can
be made in the store in a hour or so.
The modification involves unsoldering and removing the 68000
chip, attaching a daughter board in it's place, and putting the
68000 in a socket on the daughter board (I think I have that all
correctly). An interesting side-effect of this is that G.C. can
appearantly install even MORE memory ("A lot more") on the
daughter board. The Macintosh memory usage (hardwired I/O
addresses at the top of the 512K address space) makes it hard
to use any extra memory in applications. But G.C. may come out
with a product that provides more RAM that can be used for Disk
cacheing or RAM disk.
Back to HyperDrive. Included with the hardware is a bunch of software.
Though you can use a vanilla Finder, they include a modified Finder that
doesn't die if you try to copy a filedrawer into another filedrawer
(it just tells you you can't instead). There is the desk accessory
to create, mount, and unmount filedrawers. There is a Manager that does
things like checking filedrawers, GCing them (to reclaim space from files
that have been deleted), installing and changing passwords on filedrawers,
etc. There is a Backup application that can do full or incremental backups
of filedrawers, or explicitly chosen collections of files. And there is
a Security application that can en/decrypt files using a modified DES
algorithm. The latter is "twice as slow as copying the file" and replaces
the clear/encrypted file with the corresponding encrpted/clear file with
all modification times and other info preserved.
Expected list prices are $2195 for just Hyperdrive, and $2795
for HyperDrive and memory expansion from 128K to 512K. First
shipping is to be Jan 2.
All in all it seemed to make a significant, qualitative change to the
Mac. One rumor they passed on (they may not want to be quoted on this)
is that Apple has ordered quite a few to evaluate the possibility of
moving the Lisa Pascal Workshop over to a Fat Mac with HyperDrive!
That's all I can think of to tell you. If anyone has any specific
questions I'll try to answer them.
---Paul Johnson, M.I.T. Lab. for Computer Science
-------info-mac@uw-beaver (12/22/84)
From: Paul R. Johnson <PRJohnson@MIT-XX.ARPA> For those who missed Eric Olson's earlier report on HyperDrive: It is a 10 megabyte 3.5 inch Winchester hard disk drive. 5 Mbit/second transfer rate. 85 millisecond average disk access time. Up to 32 separate file drawers. (above is from General Computers information sheet) Their number is 800/422-0101 (in Mass., 617/492-500). Address is General Computer Company, 215 First St., Cambridge, Mass. 02142. The usual disclaimers apply regarding the non-existence of any relationship between myself or MIT and General Computer. ---Paul Johnson, MIT, Lab. for Computer Science -------
info-mac@uw-beaver (12/22/84)
From: Alan Crosswell <US.ALAN%CU20B@COLUMBIA.ARPA> We also had a Hyperdrive demo recently (which I was lucky enough to miss :-(. Consortium schools can get it for dealer prices. The 128->512 upgrade and disk is about $1816 quantity 1 and somewhat less for quantities of 4 and up. A couple of questions: How sensitive is the disk to bouncing around inside one of those stylish shoulder bags? Can the heads be retracted? What happens when the warranty runs out and you need to get the thing fixed? Does GC accept machines for non-warranty repair? Do they sell service contracts? My main concern is what effect it will have on Applecare (I assume this voids it). I think it is worth having with or without Apple's blessing, but I would feel a lot more comfortable recommending this product to people who purchase through us with Apple's blessing. No matter how many times you tell someone that buys something through you that it is good BUT it has a certain amount of risk of getting burned, they will always swear up and down that they understand that and will then come blaming you for giving out bad advice when the bad thing happens. This is the kind of question I have to answer when I recommend third-party products to be added to our list of discounted things we sell to Columbia affiliates. Alan Crosswell Columbia University AUC Technical Contact ------- Return-Path: <PRJOHNSON@MIT-XX.ARPA> Received: from MIT-XX.ARPA by SUMEX-AIM.ARPA with TCP; Fri 21 Dec 84 08:00:32-PST Date: Fri 21 Dec 84 10:59:39-EST From: Paul R. Johnson <PRJohnson@MIT-XX.ARPA> Subject: Re: Hyperdrive To: US.ALAN%CU20B@COLUMBIA.ARPA cc: Info-Mac@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA In-Reply-To: Message from "Alan Crosswell <US.ALAN%CU20B@COLUMBIA.ARPA>" of Fri 21 Dec 84 10:41:05-EST " A couple of questions: " " How sensitive is the disk to bouncing around inside " one of those stylish shoulder bags? Can the heads be " retracted? They seem to think it is quite robust. Certainly they jiggled it around during the demo with no ill effects. They claim the only failure they've had was when a cabbie tossed their demo-Mac on a sidewalk (a drop of four feet) which did bad things to the Mac in general. My impression is that they do retract the head, but that question was not asked at the demo. I'll try to find out from them more about that and about reliability in general. " What happens when the warranty runs out and you need " to get the thing fixed? Does GC accept machines for " non-warranty repair? Do they sell service contracts? " " My main concern is what effect it will have on Applecare (I assume " this voids it). I think it is worth having with or without Apple's " blessing, but I would feel a lot more comfortable recommending this " product to people who purchase through us with Apple's blessing. This I don't know. They claim to have a good relationship with Apple so there may be hope that Applecare is not voided. I'll try to find out more from them. For those interested here is the Warranty Information from their information sheet: "General Computer Company warrants the HyperDrive to be free from defects in materials and workmanship for a period of ninety days from the date of original purchase. The warrany covers the entire Apple Macintosh computer, the HyperDrive modifications, media, and manuals supplied by General Computer Company. This warranty has additional terms; see your participating dealer for full details." --- Paul Johnson, MIT LCS -------
info-mac@uw-beaver (01/03/85)
From: Paul R. Johnson <PRJohnson@MIT-XX.ARPA> I have some more information from General Computer Company on the HyperDrive. When power is off the heads are moved to a landing pad and locked. In that state they are rated good for 40 Gs. When powered on and running they are rated for 5 Gs. G.C.C. used to have the heads go to the landing pads if nothing had happened for some timeout period. They now think this is not necessary and don't retract them during normal operation. They claim to have had no failures from shock or vibration other than the "throw the Mac on the sidewalk" incident I related previously. With regard to maintenance and Applecare: this is still up in the air. They are talking with Apple about the effect of installation of a HyperDrive on Applecare coverage. G.C.C. is also thinking about offering "HyperCare": i.e., Applecare but also covering their own modificatoins. They will get back to me on this when anything is decided. I also enquired further about memory extension. The way it works is that their current 512K extension is done using 64K chips to extend the existing 128K in the Mac. They could "easily" substitute 256K chips. This would give either 1664K, if only the daughter-board chips are replaced, or 2Meg (2048K), if the existing 64K chips are replaced as well. All of this memory can't be used by vanilla Macintosh programs via Memory Manager calls, but any program that wanted to use it directly could do so. ---Paul Johnson, MIT LCS -------