01-Sep-1989 1104) (09/02/89)
Hi,
I just recieved a MacProducts USA Magic 150 Tape backup unit....The price is
really good...It was $895..It uses cassettes that look exactly like standard
audio cassettes, but that is where the similarity ends..
It backs up at 116 kb/second or about 7 meg/minute. Pretty fast for a tape
unit. It is a streaming unit. It uses a TEAC N50 mechanism with rev B roms.
It also has a power director built in. It has 3 switched outlets on the back
and switches up front to turn on the various units as well as a master on
switch.. It does come with dual 50-pin SCSI ports, so it doesn't have to
end the SCSI chain. A SCSI cable and terminator ARE INCLUDED. You can
ask for either the DB25 to 50-pin or a 50-pin to 50-pin, but ASK! Otherwise,
you will get the DB25 to 50-pin.
If you buy the drive, Retrospect (A fantastic backup pkg) is only $100.
MacConnection sells Retrospect for $155, so the price was right. Tapes,
which are DC600N type are $25.
Now for the bad stuff---
SCSI address is set to 1..Tape should be set to 4..To change it, you change
the jumpers on the controller board INSIDE the unit...Gulp!
Absolutely NO DOCS on the drive included. They ship the Magic DISK drive
manual! It took me 20 minutes to figure the little handle has to be UP
to load a tape...Since the unit sucks in the tape, I thought it autoloaded
on insertion....
Fastback II DOES NOT YET WORK WITH IT. It has something to do with the new
Teac ROMS, Rev B...I called Fifth Generation, they are busy on the problem.
I was promised 1 week delivery, it took 3 weeks to get with alot of customer
service runaround ("We are formatting your tapes, it takes a while", the next
call got "Backordered", next got "Still formatting tapes" [Streaming tape
drives do not need formatted tapes-So they lied, sure enough the tapes
arrived still sealed, so no formatting took place])
All in all-Without the mailorder problems, i give the drive an (A-)
Phil Hunt