kurt@tc.fluke.COM (Kurt Guntheroth) (07/11/89)
<eat red-hot flaming lines and die>
I asked for comments about the M.A.S.T Tiny Tiger, a SCSI hard disk
that hands off the parallel printer port. I wanted to know if anyone
had experience with it or M.A.S.T. In addition to a bunch of inquiries,
I got one (actually two) positive answer from Michael Sharpe,
uiucuxc!ucsd.edu!ir301%sdcc6. He says,
I bought the MAST Tiny Tiger for my A1000 because I have an Allegra memory
expansion hanging off the expansion bus and it does not provide for bus
pass-through. I've been quite happy with the Tiny Tiger.
Advantages:
1. Small size.
2. Runs cool because its power supply is separate.
3. Quiet running because no fan (none seems to be needed), and it can be
placed up to 6 feet from parallel port.
4. Has been quite reliable. I was one of the first buyers of the Tiny
Tiger, and there were some initial problems with rebooting.
MAST fixed some of the problems by installing a new component in the drive
and fixing the driver software. I also had to cut 3 capacitors at the
parallel port to improve the reliability. This is evidently a common
problem with the A1000.
5. MAST is very good with technical support. Each time I've called, I have
been able to talk to someone very knowledgable and helpful.
Disadvantages:
1. Rather slow. The best diskperf speed I get is about 53Kbytes/sec on both
read and write. As I'm not doing a lot of graphics, this does not bother me
particularly. Subjectively, it seems to load and save at about the same
speed as the HD on a standard Mac SE.
2. With a small company like this, you have to worry about the availability
of parts if they go under. I discounted this on grounds that the Tiny Tiger
was rather inexpensive and no substantial loss would be incurred.
I wrote back with some more detailed questions: can you print and access the
disk concurrently, can you add other SCSI devices, especially a streamer
tape, and for more subjective feelings concerning the speed of the device.
Michael's response:
My comments about the speed of the drive were meant to indicate that, while
the drive feels like a hard drive (about 4-5 times as fast as a floppy on
large files), it is not a screamer. If you need to move graphics or do fast
animation, forget this one. Most of what I do is TeX processing and
printing, and some programming. In compiling moderate sized programs,
there is not a significant difference, at
most a few seconds, between using the Tiny Tiger for source and libraries
and getting them from ram:. Loading and starting all the components of TeX,
which occupy about 500K, takes about 20 seconds the first time. By
comparison, the equivalent on the Mac SE with the stock Mac scsi hard disk
loads in about 10 seconds, but must reload the format file (250K) on each
run. This takes about 15 seconds.
TeX prints by composing a page in graphics mode in memory and then dumping
the output to the printer port. It requires constant disk access for fonts
and dvi files. I have never had any evidence of contention between data
sent to the drive and data sent to the parallel port for printing, and no
corruption of either. The user need not be concerned that the two devices
share a common port.
M.A.S.T is at 3881 Benatar Way, Chico, CA 95928, (916) 342-6278. They seem
always to have someone available with technical expertize to answer
questions.
The Tiny Tiger is a scsi interface. I would be surprised if they gave out
their source to the device driver. The drive case has a scsi passthrough,
so that if a streaming tape driver is written, it could be added at a later
time. I have no idea if that is in the works, or if it is feasible to do
without their source.
I called M.A.S.T. and talked to them for a time. It was an interesting
experience.
1. They are all Austrailian. Their original engineering group is still in
Austrialia, although it sounds like they are doing engineering here too.
2. Both the receptionist(?) and the technical person I talked to were aware of
technical issues and answered questions intelligently. They had some answers
and were also not afraid to say "I don't know. (but let me find out and I'll
call back.)"
3. They are thinking about adding a streamer tape "down the road", but they
are also looking at high capacity removable media, specifically floptical
disks. They seem to think it will end up being cheaper and better than a
streamer tape.
4. They have a SCSI passthrough. Right now, you can chain on additional disk
drives just by modifying the mountlist(!). Adding a streamer tape would
require writing a driver, and they don't directly support that, but were
willing to talk to me about what would be necessary. ("Maybe if you did
one, we'd buy it off you...")
I'm sold. I'm going to get one.