a360ad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gnurr) (03/28/89)
I am learning that Seagate is shipping their N series drives with either roms 7 or roms 8. Roms 7 can go 1:1 Roms 8 have to go 2:1 When you order a seagate drive from your dealer or from your favourite mail order house.. you get what you get .... you have no choice over which roms are in your mech..... at least this is what i am told. Someone please correct me if i am wrong: "I can believe both the ICD ratehd.prg and the Supra blast.prg results." (rhetorical) A friend owns a Seagate ST277N with roms 7 (built in SCSI), ICD host. He gets the following results from the two rate programs: Interleave 2:1 321 K/s 34ms 483 pics/min => 8/sec Interleave 1:1 552 K/s 34ms 721 pics/min => 12/sec One needs not be a math genius to figure out the percent increase in performance. However, my dealer refuses to believe that interleave makes a difference... I ordered a 296N that was advertized to run 1:1 .... when i got to the dealer's store tested my dealer-built box .. we learned from the packing slip that i had roms 8. The tech said he had formatted the drive 1:1 anyway... with Supra Utils... and got a positive verification. Well, a data transfer rate of 57 K/s is less than twice a floppy access.. It was at this time the tech figured that it had to be reformatted 2:1 and that INTERLEAVE was not really noticeable... He did, however, point out that he called Supra and was told that they had a roms 7 296N running on an ST and said that it was the fastest drive they had seen yet... My non-rhetorical question: Am i being ridiculous to be requesting a roms 7 mech from my dealer? Is he right.... the ICD and Supra rate programs are bunk? I am consistently being told that my dealer cannot guarantee what roms are in the mech. I tell him consistently that all he has to do is chech the packing slip... Seagate is calling me back today to let me know what exactly they are shipping... if indeed one may request a certain rom..... Has anyone else even cared about this type of thing... Does anyone know of an "upgrade" to replace my rom 8 with a rom 7 ? -kevin a360ad@blake.acs.washington.edu
Xorg@cup.portal.com (Peter Ted Szymonik) (04/01/89)
I just received two new Seagate 157N's from different 'runs' and they are both formatted 1:1 and run fine at 550Kps and 35ms. ICD's rating program is very accurate and reliable test in my opinion. So far its helped diagnois at least one person's bad sector problem on an otherwise perfect drive! I wouldn't just request Rom7's, I would DEMAND them. There is no reason you should have to accept a slower drive, not at the $400+ dollars you are paying for the drive. If I get a drive that is the least bit noisy I will send it back and keep sending it back until I get one I like, they only have to push the things out the door, we have to use them for the next five years! Peter Szymonik