TMPLee@DOCKMASTER.ARPA (01/07/88)
Has anyone had experience with the CMS line of hard drives that they'd be willing to share? (this would be for a IIGS, but presumably IIe expereince would be the same.) i'm looking for either a 20 or 40meg, the faster access the better. Its been damn hard finding a local dealer here in Minneapolis/St. Paul (somehow al the dealers of apple computers only carry apple brand peripherals, with a couple of exceptions) and I hate to buy something like that mail order. (CMS says their access time is 40ms, which beats the Everex (or is it Everett?) 60ms and Apples 80ms. I gather from some previous traffic here that the faster Siders aren't shipping yet. TMPLee@Dockmaster
tsouth@pro-pac.cts.COM (Todd South) (01/07/88)
In message: <880106215954.700718@DOCKMASTER.ARPA> >Has anyone had experience with the CMS line of hard drives that they'd >be willing to share? Sure why not, I have the CMS SD80 harddrive, and really couldn't tell you the access time on it, though it is REALLY fast. One of the nicest things on it it being able to copy all of those giant picture disks into a single ProDOS directory without waiting forever to do it! Packed 3.5" disks take seconds to copy from one directory to another. It also has the ability to do a SCSI network, where all cards (and computers connected to said cards, thereby) have access to the SCSI chain, which can connect up to eight harddrives I believe. Since my drive is eighty megabytes in size (79.6 under ProDOS in reality) I _have_ to have at least two cards in a single computer for the computer to be able to access the entire 80 megs of data, which is sectioned off into 3 main volumes (remember that nasty, stupid ProDOS volume size limit of 32 megs that NO ONE would EVER have need to go over in "home" applications :-) The SCSI bus allows you to fake a network as long as you do NOT write to the disk from two different computers at the same time. If this happens, you are in for a heap of hurt trying to reconstruct and save any information (real experience!) and might as well reformat the volume (which you can do with filer, Appleworks, Copy ][+, or anything that makes a format call), which in itself on takes two to three seconds to accomplish. The utilities that were included with the drive are MINIMAL. Owning both a Sider ][ and the CMS SD80, I can tell you straight forwardly that Sider beats the heck outta CMS in the utilities department, though, I still use the faster and more versatile SD80 more often and have come to heavily rely on Copy ][+ and lots of 3.5 inch disks for backing up the harddrive! I have yet to have it actually crash, and would hate to have that happen since a "real" crash would mean that I probably would have to send it back to the company for diags, since none were included with the package. Now, on the SCSI networking. I would AGAIN like to state that it is a wonder to me that we as a group STILL do not have a REAL fileserver available to the Apple community (I have seen the Corvus kludge and do not think it is a fileserver that would meet workhorse needs!) Why, oh why do people still think (Apple Marketting apparently thinks this way!) that the //gs or the Apple ][ family cannot and will not be used in a network! I would love a network! I live and breath for the day that some noble body at Apple allows the lowly ][ family the ability to use AppleTalk! I would appreciate any knowledge of a fileserving system available for the ][ family, incase I have missed it somewhere, and wish that Apple would get on this net, like Commodore is on comp.sys.amiga all of the time, and tell us if we can ever expect to see some real support for all of this AppleTalk ROM that is sitting inside my //gs! Any comments would be sincerely appreciated, and (Disclaimer:) all opinions stated in the above are mine, and in no way reflect the level of my anger when talking about getting a fileserving system operating on my favorite computer! Todd South +------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Todd South : Ewa Beach, HI. | The more I drink,| | Uucp: crash!pnet01!pro-simasd!pro-pac!tsouth | The more all this| | Pacific Proline (808) 499-2831 -1007 2400bd | makes sense... | +------------------------------------------------------------------+
lwv@n8emr.UUCP (Larry W. Virden) (01/10/88)
Note that all of my info comes from talking to the CMS folks on CIS. Also, I am working with them to get them onto Usenet!!! Stay tuned. The CMS 60 meg drive is cheaper than the 40 meg! At least, for the Apple2 it is. That is because CMS has a special Apple 2 model which includes the SCSI card. It is about $1100 list, but I have seen it mail order for as little as $920. The 40 meg disk is about $1000 list but you have to buy the SCSI card separately for about $125. Go with the 60 meg (2 30 meg prodos volumes ... sigh - sure wish I could win ohio's 30 million dollar lottery today :-)). Folks on CIS are QUITE happy with CMS and the 60 meg drive. the only problem that I have heard of is that it needs to be powered on when you boot the machine (before?) and needs to be power cycled if you power cycle your apple. At least, that is how I understand it. -- Larry W. Virden 75046,606 (CIS) 674 Falls Place, Reynoldsburg, OH 43068 (614) 864-8817 cbosgd!n8emr!lwv (UUCP) cbosgd!n8emr!lwv@PSUVAX1 (BITNET) We haven't inherited the world from our parents, but borrowed it from our children.
mkao@pnet01.cts.COM (Mike Kao) (01/10/88)
I bought a CMS-60 meg drive at AppleFest '87 for only $945! It was and still
is an EXCELLENT deal. It is pretty quiet and there is no problem in powering
on. The only problem arises when disk utilities check what volumes are online,
and your drive happens to be off. In that case, your system will just hang
or get an IO error, since the peripheral is recognized but not connected. This
is really not much of a problem since all you have to do is turn on the drive
and restart your program. The only improvement I can think of for this drive
is that the access time could be faster. I'm not sure what the msecs are
exactly, but I know the CMS 20
and 40 have faster access times. Overall, though, the 60 is a better deal.
To insure my reception of any replies, please respond via e-mail. Thanks!
-- Mike Kao
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