dws@tolerant.UUCP (Dave W. Smith) (07/10/85)
I saw a demo and sales pitch for the Paradise MAC-10 3.5" winchester
yesterday evening. The salient points, which I don't guarantee to be
100% accurate, are:
o 10Mb Micro Science Drive. 20Mb drive currently under evaluation.
o The drive has an external power supply (not shown in the MacWorld
ad) which is intended to sit on the floor. No Power switch! It
is triggered by the Mac, and powers on/off when the Mac does.
o Plugs into printer or modem port. A printer port is included on
the back of the drive.
o Integral print spooler included. Size of spool area settable at
format time. No further details here.
o Mount manager currently handels up to 26 volumes. Volume size can
range from 400Kb to available space.
o "Shut Down" causes the disk to park its heads.
o A disk-buffer-caching scheme is bundled with the package. No further
details.
o Available mid-August. Paradise is working on a discount scheme
for developers and user groups. Retail price is $1495.
Overall Impression: It works fairly well. The combination of disk-cache
and hard-disk seems to be a real win, though I wasn't able to do any sort
of a quantitative testing (no that they wouldn't have let me -- there were
too many people standing around the Mac waiting to get at the keyboard).
[Standard disclaimer here] I have no direct connection with Paradise.
--
David W. Smith {ucbvax}!tolerant!dws
Tolerant Systems, Inc.
408/946-5667