[comp.sys.apple] Hard Drives

TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (12/29/87)

Does anyone know of a better summary of hard drives available for a GS
than was in the November A+?  Although fairly thorough, that article did
not contain any technical specs on average access time and transfer
rate, and I gather various drives do come in various speeds.  I am more
interested in speed and price than capacity; the last dealer I talked to
didn't even have any technical specs on the drives he was selling
(Everett, which looked pretty good in a test drive, but which are new to
the Apple II market; $700 for 20meg doesn't sound bad.)

TMPLee@dockmaster.arpa

nfong@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Fong) (02/23/88)

I disagree that the data xfer rates of a IIgs SCSI card are higher than
that of any Mac except the Mac2.  Probably the transfer rates of any mac
are >2X faster than the II.  The scsi card can handle a 3:1 interleave
barely.. (Due to on board ram to buffer things)  The company I work for
builds fast drives on the Mac, sustainable transfer rates of 1.4 MBytes
per second on a Mac2.  I think people to watch the access times because
date throughput is so slow on the II.  On the other hand, Prodos's
file/directory management is so disk intensive, a faster access time may
help.  One thing nice about Apple's SCSI drives is that you need not
use a foreign formatter to format the disks.  3rd party scsi drives need
custom formatters, which no doubt will need maintenance with future
ROM/OS updates.

nfong@ucbcory.Berkeley.Edu

ralphw@IUS3.IUS.CS.CMU.EDU (Ralph Hyre) (02/25/88)

In article <939@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> nfong@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Fong) writes:
>help.  One thing nice about Apple's SCSI drives is that you need not
>use a foreign formatter to format the disks.  3rd party scsi drives need
>custom formatters, which no doubt will need maintenance with future
>ROM/OS updates.
If this is true, I'd appreciate answers to ANY the following questions:
- Why is this?  I though SCSI had a 'format' command.  All you need to tell a
  Sun (using the 'diag' utility) is the adapter board type, the drive geometry
  (cylinders,heads,sectors/track, interleave) and it formats just fine.
- What components does Apple use in their drives?  
- How can Apple sell a SCSI card for the II without bundling it with a drive?
- Is the Apple II formatter more 'generic' than the Mac version?
- Does the Apple II SCSI board use the protocol converter conventions?
- What will I need to do if I hook up the following? 
	Rodime 204E(ST-506)<->Adaptec ACB 4000<->SCSI bus<->Apple
	Micropolis 1355(ESDI)<->Emulex MD21<->SCSI bus<->Apple


-- 
					- Ralph W. Hyre, Jr.

Internet: ralphw@ius2.cs.cmu.edu    Phone:(412)268-{2847,3275} CMU-{BUGS,DARK}
Amateur Packet Radio: N3FGW@W2XO, or c/o W3VC, CMU Radio Club, Pittsburgh, PA

roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (02/25/88)

nfong@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Fong) writes:
> 3rd party scsi drives need custom formatters

	I don't know about that.  I recently bought a Mac-Plus w/ Rodime-20
drive and Radius accelerator board (and Full Page Display).  Radius tech
support warned me that there was something strange about the way Rodime
formats their disks which makes them unusable with the accelerator (some
timing snafu having to do with interleave; I confess I didn't quite
understand the problem) and they suggested that I reformat the disk with
Apple's standard SCSI formatter.  I did so, and have been running fine for
the past month or so.

	So, there is at least one example of a thrid party disk which does
not need a custom formatter.  Disproof by counterexample.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (02/27/88)

I recently installed an Everex 40Meg drive on my GS; it is mostly sold
to the Macintosh market but has a SCSI interface so it plugs right into
an Apple SCSI card.  In a sense it had to be formatted by "foreign
software" -- if it's formatted by any of the ProDOS utilities I have
(System Utilities, Finder, Copy II+, possibly something else) you can
only use a small part of it -- 8 Meg, I seem to remember (40-32 is the
clue).  So what you do is have it be formatted on a Macintosh (gets you
32Meg) at the dealer and very carefully carry it home.

Everex has promised the dealer the right kind of software (i.e., under
ProDos) that will format the whole thing (into two 20M volumes) provide
backup etc.  (Its been a month or so, so its time to bug them again...)

p.s., it works fine, no errors, is quiet, and is fast.

fjo@ttrdf.UUCP (Frank Owen ) (03/04/88)

>> 3rd party scsi drives need custom formatters
> 
> 	So, there is at least one example of a thrid party disk which does
> not need a custom formatter.  Disproof by counterexample.

Another counter-example:
  Take a standard off-the-shelf Seagate ST225N disk drive. Wire
up an appropriatte SCSI connector to connect to Apples weird DB-25
connector.  Apples Standard formatter can then be used to initialize
this drive.
  Only one possible problem: If you want to connect to the non-platinum
Mac-pluses, you will have to disable the UNIT ATTENTION feature of the
ST225N. This is easily done by sending a "magic" SCSI command to the drive.
(see the seagate manual for details)


-- 
Frank Owen (fjo@ttrde)  312-982-2182
AT&T Information Systems
Computer Systems Division, 5555 Touhy Ave., Skokie, IL  60077
PATH:  ...!ihnp4!ttrde!fjo

rs.miller@pro-newfrontier.UUCP (Randy Miller) (02/06/89)

Larry Moss at uhura.cc.rochester.edu writes whether the Apple ProFile drives
could be used with a Franklin 1000, seeing that it was originally used with
the Apple III and LISA.  Larry, as long as you have the Apple II ProFile
interface card, You CAN use the ProFile with the Franklin, PROVIDED you have a
patched copy of ProDOS that gets around the machine checking ProDOS does to
see whether it is running on an honest-to-pete- Apple II.  I have run ProFiles
from my office on the Laser 128 with the expansion box with no problems.
  As for the Corvus drive, if you really want to get it to work, you would
need to get a "mini-network" going to get it to run.  First, does the drive
have a network controller box?  In order to run ProDOS on the drive, you will
need the newer ROMS for the transporter card.  If you have the network
controller box and the new ROMS on the Transporter, you will need Corvus' OCS
I or OCS II cabling.  I recommend the OCS II cabling system, since it is
nearly idiotproof to screw up.  (I used to work technical support, and have
dealt with Corvus networking problems).  Finally, to get the drive running,
ESPCIALLY under ProDOS, you will need either Constellation II or Constellation
III networking software to generate a ProDOS volume.  Remember, the Corvus
Drives are based on UCSD p-system, and installation of the firmware,
ESPECIALLY with Constellation II is not for the faint of heart.  I personally
recommend Constellation III, since it is on the order of a magnitude easier to
install.  Drop me mail if you need further assistance
Randy Miller
rs.miller@pro-newfrontier

emerrill@pro-carolina.UUCP (Eric Merrill) (06/02/89)

I have a IIgs and am looking for a good harddrive that won't bankrupt me.
I'd like at least 40 megs, but prefer closer to 60 or 80.  No, I don't really
want to make my own "plain vanilla" drive, either.  I've seen retail lists of
drives for Macs (Oops--sorry about that mention!) from 3rd parties for 60 and
80 megs under $1K.  Any good suggestions?  What kind of drives do you have,
how
much $$, and are you happy with them?


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JDA@NIHCU.BITNET (Doug Ashbrook) (06/03/89)

> I have a IIgs and am looking for a good harddrive that won't bankrupt me.
> I'd like at least 40 megs, but prefer closer to 60 or 80.  No, I don't really
> want to make my own "plain vanilla" drive, either.  I've seen retail lists of
> drives for Macs (Oops--sorry about that mention!) from 3rd parties for 60 and
> 80 megs under $1K.  Any good suggestions?  What kind of drives do you have,
> how
> much $$, and are you happy with them?

I have a 40 meg Chinook for which I paid $860.  One of the main
reasons that I bought this drive was that it comes with an Apple SCSI
card.  I have been very happy with the drive.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
J. Douglas Ashbrook                                   (301) 496-5181
BITNET: JDA@NIHCU                              <-- preferred address
INTERNET: JDA@CU.NIH.GOV     or     jda%nihcu.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu
National Institutes of Health, Computer Center,   Bethesda, MD 20892

-+- Remember.  If some weirdo in a blue suit offers you some MS-DOS,
JUST SAY NO!

yk4@CUNIXB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (Yong Su Kim) (10/21/89)

	Well, you could build your own hard drive by assembling the components
of a hard drive. I did this and it cost me under $700 for a 60Meg SCSI drive
with an Apple SCSI card. Just pick up some computer magazine and you can 
see ads for seagate drives. As long as they are SCSI and you have a SCSI card, they will work. You can then buy a power supply and a case to house the drive
and then you have a hard drive which is cheaper than commercial products.
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gt0t+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Gregory Ross Thompson) (10/22/89)

  Got a question for all you guys.

  My CMC hard drive has the following components:

Drive mechanism: Nidec (Nippon Densen Corp 05FAPX4404)
Conroller Card: Konan Corporation P-DJ2-301-B

  Ok, that's all I could read off the drive and the controller.  If
anyone out there has any clues as to what type of drive it is (SCSI,
SASY, RLL, etc...), or what the interface converts to, etc...  

  The problem with the drive is that it does not work with GS/OS (any
version) because of what I thought was the drivers, but now I'm
thinking othewise.

  When I made GS/OS the startup program on my drive, as soon as it
loaded the ProDOS file, or start.gsos, or something,  it crashed into
monitor.  I don't know if it's because of the drive's interrupts
killing gsos or what.  Does ANYONE have ANY ideas?

  It's a CMC 'Quick-20' drive if that makes any difference....

      -Greg T.

========================================================================
* I want my hard drive to work,    #ARPANet : gt0t+@andrew.cmu.edu     ^
* but I can't afford a new one.    #Bitnet:Floyd@Drycas.club.cc.cmu.edu^
* Won't someone help me???  Money  #Bitnet : y614gt0t@VB.CC.CMU.EDU    ^
* would be appreciated...:-)       #Can I get one more account???      ^
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