jborza%burgundy@Sun.COM (Jim_Borza) (02/07/89)
I promised to post a summary of responses regarding the CompatiCard.
For what it's worth, here's the summary.
[Original Posting]
I have heard of a product called CompatiCard; a floppy controller
card reportedly capable of controlling four f/d drives of ANY
persuasion (360K, 1.2M, 720K, 1.44M). I have contacted the manu-
facturer for his brochure but was wondering if there are any in Net-
Land who have used such a beast and would like to comment (pro or con)
on their experiences. If by e-mail, I promise to summarize for the
net.
For your information, product's manufacturer is:
Micro Solutions Computer Products
132 W. Lincoln Hwy.
DeKalb, IL 60115
(815) 756-3411
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From: wew@naucse.UUCP (Bill Wilson)
The compaticard is great. I have one at home on my AT that controls a
360K drive. I have one at work that controls a 720 K drive and a
friend uses one as his major floppy controller in an XT. The card
works very well with Uniform (their disk conversion program) and also
with third party cards like the Matchpoint card and also the Copy
Option Deluxe Board. If you need to add devices to a machine I would
highly suggest this board.
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From: berger@clio.las.uiuc.edu (Mike Berger)
I use the compaticard in an XT clone with 2 360K 5.25"
drives, a 1.2 M 5.25" drive, and 1.4 M 3.5" drive. In
the same machine, I have a Maynard FDC-8 with 2 8"
drives (the compaticard can accomodate 8" drives to). The
compaticard lives up to all expectations, and the software
device drivers that come with are excellent. Although
the card is somewhat expensive, the support that's included
makes it worth the money.
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From whuts!2212msr (Max S. Robin)
I've got a Compaticard installed in an IBM AT and am quite pleased w/it. I
normally run the system with the CC controlling a 5 1/4"-360K and a
3 1/2"-1.44M drive. I should mention that my AT is quite
an early on and does not recognize 3 1/2" in BIOS. I found the
folks who sell the CC quite helpful in resolving initial configuration
problems. highly recommended!
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From ward@cfa.harvard.edu
I don't know about the Compaticard, but here are a couple of
possibilities:
2-drive, all density, drive type FDC for XT/AT, from Network P.C.
I have it and it works great.
2-drive, all density, drive type FDC for XT/AT, $50.00 from Jameco
Electronics, also, 4-drive all density/drives FDC for $60.00, these
are new Jameco products, I have not used them but apparently the
2-drive unit is the same as the one I have from Network P.C., I just
ordered the 4-drive Jameco unit so I will find out soon.
It is important the controller and drives support and use the
disk change (rather than ready signal) signal on pin 34 when using
with MSDOS. Most drives allow jumper selection of disk change signal
for pin 34 and most FDC's support its use, but verify it!
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From ATT!ihlpl!cwr (Chuck Rudolph)
I had a compaticard I (4 drives) and a compaticard II (2 drives) that
I was evaluating on an AT&T 6300 as a secondary controller due to the
fact that the primary controller is part of the motherboard and is
imposible to disable. There are not too many floppy disk controllers
that can co-exist with another controller, but this one can.
There is another floppy disk controller that also can co-exist with
another controller and it is sold by:
Small Office Systems or Datadisk
P.O. Box 157.
Dixon NM. 87527-0157 (505)579-4496.
Both the compaticard
and the datadisk can control all four disk formats+. compaticard uses a
custom driver w/o any on board bios for xt systems, where datadisk has
an on board bios chip for xt's that loads like xt hard disk bios and
uses standard dos driver.sys to configure your system if you run dos3.3
Dos 3.2 and earlier requires optional datadisk drivers for 1.44m and
1.2 meg for dos 3.0. the compaticard comes with cables and the compaticard
does not. I PERSONALLY THINK THE COMPATICARDS ARE TOO EXPENSIVE and I
visited their showroom and told them so. I will say one thing though,
their boards work well as both an only controller and a secondary one.
One important thing if you are using any of these as a secondary
controller they all use port 370H-377H. This make imposible for most
FAST hard disk backup programs to work because to get their speed they
dont go through the bios but write direct to the hardware 3F0H-3F7H
(primary floppy disk controller).
compaticard I 4 drives ~$175
compaticard II 2 drives ~$150
datadisk 2 drives ~$100
Take your choice of the above co-existable controllers.
I just remembered that Western Digital makes a multiformat floppy disk
controller that comes in four versions depending on wether yoy want 2
or 4 floppies or need optional XT bios or not. No cables included.
Western Digital AFOX 2/4 drives ~$ 75
=========================================================================
Summary: All who have used the Compaticard have had good results.
An additional consensus is they are priced too high. Two respon-
dents offered alternatives, some of which are significantly less
expensive. My conclusion: I will check out the alternatives but
will likely swallow the additional cost of the Compaticard, due to
the rave reviews.
Thanks very much to all who responded.
Jim Borza - Sun Microsystems
Disclaimer? Sure, why not?