info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac) (09/08/84)
From: LEVITT%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA I've had a Corvus 6 Meg disk for a few weeks now. It's not what I expected, but it's good, and I recommend it for people who want a hard disk now. I'd HEARD on info-mac and elsewhere that the Corvus disk connected to the external floppy port (eliminating any interference with AppleBus or the modem), and that one could boot directly off of it. If Corvus has such a product, it's not what I got; presumably that's still in development. I got a Corvus "OmniDrive" with a special cable that plugs into the 9-pin Modem connector and boots off a floppy Corvus provided. It was a rush order, so I wasn't mad or surprised that there were some multiple versions of software, and slightly inconsistent documentation. It's still very good, and I presume in the next software release it will be even better. The key improvement over Davong and Tecmar is software-unmountable volumes, which can reduce the time and memory required to enter the Finder, and can make managing very large numbers of files possible. The drive arrived burned in - with a bit of extra on-line documentation on MACSYS, the first of four 1-1/4 Meg volumes on the disk, and a few fonts I hadn't seen before in the system. (Obviously this happened at the discretion of that dealer.) As soon as I boot the Mac I generally run the Mount Manager application to eject the floppy and transfer control to the System living on MACSYS. The Mount Manager lets you Mount/Unmount floppies and any of the four Corvus volumes. (I received two slightly different versions; I hear internal versions of it used command icons - a pair of dogs performing either operation.) The drive is smaller than the Davong and light (~8 pounds?). The problems are (1) you CAN'T boot directly off the hard disk, so you must wait for a floppy run the silly "Mount Manager" every time; (2) you can't leave your modem connected; (3) certain operations, like ERASE and dragging into a closed disk, don't work; and only two volumes can be mounted at a time. Current software is not user-proof; I can mount 3 volumes at my own risk, and it's my problem if the system breaks when my volume map gets full. But I've never had any hardware or software problems with it.