KB13@TE.CC.CMU.EDU (Ken Burner) (01/22/87)
Kevin,
I asked a similar question a couple of months ago and didn't get
much response, except a few people who seem disappointed with the
service they get from their local System Industries folks. That may be
a good thing to check out in your area.
As for their "C Series" disks, we just installed four 9761-Cs on
our VMS 4.4 8650 through an HSC-70 controller. They seem to work,
although we've barely begun using them. They appear to VMS (and to the
HSC) to be RA81s, only larger. I've been advised that procedures which
depend on the actual topology of the tracks and sectors probably won't
allow interchanging of an RA81 and a 9761-C (for example, you can't
shadow the DEC disk with the SI disk, nor restore a bit-image HSC backup
tape from one onto the other), but otherwise they are identical. We
haven't run any performance tests yet, but the SI people tell me (and
they haven't lied so far) that there should be a marginal improvement in
performance compared to the RA81.
I recommend the 9761-C over the 9751-C, simply because of its
lower cost per megabyte -- which is why I bought them. I also bought
them because, at the time, the DEC RA81 was not a very attractive price-
performer (although, one might expect steep discounts following the RA82
announcement). And, I have to emphasize that we have a very good
relationship with our local SI people.
-Ken Burner
Hardware Systems
CMU Computing Center
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