manis@ubc-cs.UUCP (02/25/87)
I'm considering two purchases over the next few months, and I was wondering
if I could get some input:
a) a company called Terrific advertises a clock chip which mounts underneath
some chip on the motherboard. I remember the warning from Neil Harris on
the dangers of the Logikhron (as I remember, it occasionally trashed hard
disks); has anybody had any experience with the Terrific chip (or any
other clock)?
b) I'm also considering buying a hard disk. The two alternatives seem to be
the Atari SH204 and the Supra 30Meg drive, which Computer Mail Order
advertises at about US$100 more than the Atari drive. Is the Supra a good
buy? Is it reliable? Is it faster than, the same speed as, or slower than
the SH204? The Berkeley Microsystems drive is also a possibility, but
the prices I've seen seem a little out of my leage.
I'd appreciate any comments on either of these topics.
-----
Vincent Manis {ihnp4!alberta,uw-beaver}!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!manis
Dept. of Computer Science manis@cs.ubc.cdn
Univ. of British Columbia manis%ubc.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa
Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5 manis@ubc.csnet
(604) 228-6770 or 228-3061
"BASIC is the Computer Science equivalent of 'Scientific Creationism'."pwp@iuvax.UUCP (02/26/87)
I have been using the Supra 30 Meg drive and am quite happy with it. I
don't have any thing to compare it with. I hope some one fixes the
40 folder problem soon. After making a strong {_effort not to have
many folders I managed to get by with 100. I am very careful to reboot
following any time I open very many, and so far every thing has
worked ok, at least the contents of the disk have been ok. A few
times I rebooted because the system looked like it was in trouble.
I hope I am backed up enough. I just can not seem to find any
reasonable way to use 30 Megbytes and have only 40 folders.leavens@atari.UUCP (03/05/87)
> a) a company called Terrific advertises a clock chip which mounts underneath > some chip on the motherboard. I remember the warning from Neil Harris on I've heard good things about them, but have not used it myself. I have a board that goes into the chip socket on the keyboard, and uses two rechargeable nickelcad batteries, with a little program in the auto folder to read the clock at boot time. I think it's called ST-Time, and I like it. > b) I'm also considering buying a hard disk. The two alternatives seem to be > the Atari SH204 and the Supra 30Meg drive... I use an SH204 myself, and like it very much. I've also heard good things about the Supra. --alex @ Atari BIX: alexl. GEnie: ALEXLEAVENS Atari Corp: 408-745-2160
rbk@akguc.UUCP (03/06/87)
> A company called Terrific advertises a clock chip which mounts underneath > some chip on the motherboard. I remember the warning from Neil Harris on > the dangers of the Logikhron (as I remember, it occasionally trashed hard > disks); has anybody had any experience with the Terrific chip (or any > other clock)? I have been using the Logikhron clock card and an Atari hard disk together on my 1040 for about six months now, and have never had any problems. I called Logikhron when I first got my hard disk and was told that they had never been able to verify the reported problems and had never had any reports of problems directly from users. Perhaps the reported problems were not really related to the clock card (the 40-folder bug maybe???) or were related to some "special" version of the operating system or the hard disk driver used at Atari. BTW, when ARE we going to see the updated hard disk driver (or whatever) from Atari that allows booting from the hard disk??? R. Brad Kummer {ihnp4, seismo!akgua}!akguc!rbk AT&T Bell Labs Atlanta, GA
leavens@atari.UUCP (Alex Leavens) (03/09/87)
in article <7988@akguc.UUCP>, rbk@akguc.UUCP (R. Brad Kummer) says: > > BTW, when ARE we going to see the updated hard disk driver (or whatever) > from Atari that allows booting from the hard disk??? > If we were working on such a thing, I'm sure we'd be trying very hard to get it out the door. <grin> --alex @ Atari BIX: alexl. GEnie: ALEXLEAVENS AtariCorp: 408-745-2006
fischer-michael@YALE.ARPA.UUCP (03/11/87)
In-reply-to: imagen!atari!leavens@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Alex Leavens) > in article <7988@akguc.UUCP>, rbk@akguc.UUCP (R. Brad Kummer) says: > > > > BTW, when ARE we going to see the updated hard disk driver (or whatever) > > from Atari that allows booting from the hard disk??? > > > If we were working on such a thing, I'm sure we'd be trying very hard > to get it out the door. <grin> I want to thank Alex for becoming active on the net and responding to people's questions. However, I was a little disappointed at his uninformative answer above. Perhaps he is unaware of the history surrounding this issue. Late last summer, someone at Atari said that such a program was already finished, was being used in-house at Atari, and would be released shortly after it had been tested thoroughly. It never was. A couple of months ago, Allan Pratt explained on the net that when he boots his machine, he simply inserts a blank floppy and the machine boots automatically from the hard disk. So apparently the program is still being used in-house at Atari. We were also told that the reason it had not been released to the world was because it can be tricky to recover from a bad boot sector or bad programs in the C:\AUTO folder on the hard disk, for if the machine crashes during booting, how can you delete the offending files? Atari wanted to be sure that people who encountered this problem would have a way out other than calling Atari and asking for help. (Reasonable enough!) It seemed to me that an easy way to recover would be to have a floppy with a valid boot sector, such as the original TOS-in-RAM system disk. Booting from this disk would bypass the hard disk boot, allowing the machine to come up normally without running the programs on the hard disk. One could then install the hard disk driver and go in and repair the C:\AUTO folder or rebuild the boot sector or whatever. If that indeed is the best strategy for recovery, then it would be reaonable for Atari to make sure that anyone using the program also had access to the recovery procedures by only distributing the program with such a disk and not posting it to the net. But that has apparently not been done, either. That's the last we've heard. We know the program exists and has been in daily use at Atari for over six months. We just want to know when we can have it. --Mike Fischer <fischer@yale.arpa> -------
leavens@atari.UUCP (03/14/87)
in article <8703111519.AA03527@yale-eli.YALE.ARPA>, fischer-michael@YALE.ARPA (Michael Fischer) says: > > Late last summer, someone at Atari said that such a program was > already finished, was being used in-house at Atari, and would be > released shortly after it had been tested thoroughly. It never > was. > That's the last we've heard. We know the program exists and has > been in daily use at Atari for over six months. We just want to > know when we can have it. > Yep, I know. I'd like to see it released also--Unfortunately, I'm not the one who has a say-so in this matter. --alex @ Atari BIX:alexl. GEnie: ALEXLEAVENS AtariCorp: 408-745-2006 "How can you be in two places at once when you're not anywhere at all."