g-verbru@rocky.cs.wisc.edu.CS.WISC.EDU (Rob Verbrugghe) (10/28/88)
A while ago I heard a rumor that there were problems with the CMS
MacStack 60 hard drive. Here are the reults I got:
From: John Terranova <TERRANOVA@vms3.macc.wisc.edu>
I have had my CMS Macstack 60 Meg hard drive since May of this year. I
have yet to have any problems with it - it is noisy, though. I got it
from some mail order house, but I forget its name. The price was good:
$785. I would not think twice before recommending the CMS 60 to anyone.
-----
From: jspear@afit-ab.arpa (Jon L. Spear)
Gee, I've had my MacStack 60 from CMS (bought from MacLand) for nearly 4
months now. Works great.
-----
From: kelvin@cs.utexas.edu (Kelvin Thompson)
I've had some odd problems, but I don't know whether to blame them on my
CMS 60 Meg.
Occasionally, my Plus gets in a bad mood, where it starts crashing regularly
for no good reason. The crashes start out on a few programs, then get
more and more frequent until I can't even boot the computer from the hard
disk. Replacing the System and Finder usually fixes the problem (sometimes
I have to replace a crashing program).
The latest incarnation of the bug: I try to run MacKermit (PD version posted
a few months ago) by double-clicking on a document it has created. I get
a complaint that the document is damaged. I then make a copy of the
document, and successfully run from the copy.
The problem happened with both releases 5.0 and 6.0 of system software.
I did an overnight, data-destructive test on the CMS and found no
disk errors. I've tried running without Font/DA Juggler, INITs, and
various programs, but the problem persists.
I'm starting to think I have a very subtle, transient hardware problem
with either my Plus or the CMS. Perhaps a flakey memory or SCSI chip
(in either the Plus or the CMS) is occasionnally leaving bad bits on the disk.
I've had no problems with power supplies. A Plus a work has had an
identical CMS for several months and has experienced no problems at all.
-----
From: chucks@acdpyr.UCAR.EDU (Chuck Smythe)
I got one about a month ago. It has been running circa 35 hours a week ever
since, without problems. My only complaint is a lot of shrieking from the
discharge brush - it happens much more often than on my old Jasmine 20.
-----
From: wicinski@NRL-CMF.ARPA (Tim Wicinski)
anyway, i bought my 60MB a while ago, somewhere around april-may (i wrote the
check in may, but i remember having it for a month before i had to write the
check). so 5 months now i can safely say, and not a hint of failure.
and I'm sorry, i cannot see how a power supply can waste an entire hard disk!
I just asked some hardware hacks about that, and they said if the power
supply burns out, the worst it can do is waste the controller card.
and don't they have a year warranty anyway???
-----
From: Chris Schanzle <chris@umbc3.umd.edu>
I personally have a CMS SD60, which I received back in April and to date
have NO bad blocks. At the same time, my friend ordered one (both from
HardWare House) and his died miserably after just an hour or two of use.
Once returned, the replacement has functionally worked fine, but a few
bad blocks turned up when he did a verify one night, so he decided to
reformat it. No other problems tho.
Finally, I had another friend buy his about two months ago, I used it
at work for a short period of time (say, 10 hours at most) and let him
depart for school (his mac was still on order at the time). He has JUST
received his Mac+ and I'm sure the drive will get a thorough workout soon.
If you would like later info on it's performance, save my address
(chris@umbc3.umd.edu) and drop a blurb in the mail asking how Jon's drive
is working. (I'll remember that way!)
As a footnote, I was told by Hardware house that EVERY DRIVE in the batch
of four was returned in a matter of days *except for mine*. I'm just
not quite sure what to make of it!!!
ps - I've tried another formatting utility called "Gigasoft Installer"
on my drive to run at 1:3 interleave rather than the crappy 1:5
CMS drivers require. Even though Gigasoft's installer recommended
formatting @ 1:3, I was still getting DiskTimer II times around 135,
compared to 150's for CMS's. On the Mac II however, I was getting
times around 98 with the 1:3 interleave...so I'm not sure what to
make of it on the Mac+. Unfortunately for both sets of drivers,
the SCSI Accelerator (vers 1.2) either hangs the drive on long
writes (CMS) or crashes when the INIT get's loaded (Gigasoft).
I'm pretty bummed out...I believe Plus can handle 1:3 effectively!
-----
From: fornax!sfu_dipper!mcdonald@andrew.cs.ubc.ca (Ken Mcdonald)
I had a CMS 60 internal for a while, and it was REAL bad news. Bad
software, bad design, incredible vibration, and dropped sectors at
more than 2/week. Needless to say, I got rid of it, and will NEVER
buy from them again.
-----
From: lakesys!macak%uwmcsd1.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu (Jim Macak)
So that you don't get a totally skewed set of mail, I thought I would note
that I have had my CMS SD-60 for 9 months now and have had no problems with it
whatsoever....
-----
From: Jack Decker <jackd@copper.mdp.tek.com>
The CMS 60 meg I purchased in Oct 87 blew a power supply after
approximately 6 months. Fortunately, it didn't damage the
disk or the data and I was able to mount the volume by using
the power supply of a Mac Bottom I connected to the inert CMS.
After backing up the disk to tape in this manner, I made
arrangements with CMS for a replacement and shipped the unit
out at my expense. Within 10 days I received my HD with a new
power supply, case, and quieter fan with all my data still intact. Since
that time I have had no further problems, once I figured out
that I had to modify the documentation to fit my modified
drive (The drive essentially behaved liked an 80 meg as far as
SCSI settings went.)
To sum up, yes I experienced a failure with a CMS 60 but I am
still generally satisfied. The savings over other models made
the slight hassle worthwhile.
-----
From: pixar!r2d2!jh@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (John Harkin)
My CMS SD60 works great. The only quirk it has is that if the room
is cold, then when it starts up, it takes a couple of minutes for
the platter to slow down to the right speed. This means that I get
to look at the blinking "?" for a while, but when it does wake up,
everything is OK.
-----
From: brucer@pwcs.stpaul.gov (Bruce Alan Riebe)
We have around 20 of the CMS 60 meg externals (are the 60SD series the same
as the MacStack?). I have had only 1 power supply go out (it was the first
one we had ever received).
By the way if you have the CMS tape drive, the power supply can be used
in the 60 meg drive...:-)
They are not the fastest drive in the world 40ms, but they seem to be very
reliable and we pay around 795.00 and 655.00 for the Mac II internal.
-----
From: ucsd!trout.nosc.mil!telesoft!rlk%ll-xn.UUCP@spool.cs.wisc.edu
(Bob Kitzberger @sation)
I've had a CMS 60 MacStack running nearly continuously since May '88.
No problems at all - I'm very pleased with it. btw, the price I paid was
$679 from MacLand (mail order).
-----
>From: ian@inmet.UUCP
I've been running my CMS 60M since February without any real problems.
It HAS developed an occasional whine. Any idea what that is?
-----
>From: rdsesq@Jessica.stanford.edu (Rob Snevely)
I noticed that mine got louder as the drive got more fragmented. I reformatted
it and it's quite a bit quieter now.
-----
From Roger.W.Brown@mac.dartmouth.edu Thu Oct 6 19:01 EDT 1988
I just saw your inquiry of Sept. 20 on Usenet. I have been using a CMS
MacStack 60 since December 87. I bought it for two main reasons: it is much
quieter than several others that I had tried, and the developers price from
CMS was either $695 or $595, I can't remember. I do remember that the price
per MB was much lower than anything else around. And the effective speed is
quite good (its on a Mac+).
I have had no trouble with it at all. I use it mainly for development work,
but my kids and some of their friends use it for games and they are not
especially careful with it.
I have only transported it twice, short distance. I highly recommend them.
-----
From gale@oka.cs.wisc.edu Mon Oct 10 15:02 EDT 1988
I tried to boot my hard disk the other day and got system errors. Finally
it booted, but I could only read about half of the files on the disk.
So I did a verify blocks test. There were 6 errors within 500 blocks.
(Not good when there are 120000 blocks). Anyway I reformatted it and
it seemed to work ok (I didn't have a lot of patience by then so I only
tested up to 10000 or so). Anyway the next day it was all bad again,
so I am going to send it back. Up till 5 days ago it worked fine.
It doesn't sound different now, but it has always made a little noise
when it starts and stops. I don't know how normal that is.
I will let you know how it turns out.
karey
] This was karey's second SD60. She now has a third and it
] seems to work fine (so did the second when she got it.)
] Her first SD60 died in the first month. She heard that there were
] quite a few problems with the SD60, but the folks at Hardware House
] and CMS have been fairly prompt and helpful.
-----
I have a CMS 60 Mb internal on my Mac II and have had zero (0) problems wit
it and wouldn't trade it for any other 60Mb (maybe a 330Mb priam, but..)
I got mine from a Mail order place called hardware house in pennsylvania,
for about $695/$699 or so. Shipped 1 day later. Got it FedEx 2 days after
that.
------------
I happen to be an owner of a CMS SD 60 for approx. 6 months now and I
must say I am very pleased. Not a single bad block (knock...knock)
since I owned it, never a software problem that I could attribute to
CMS's programming.
It is, however, NOT the best drive available - it is not the fastest
(as you know, 40ms access time isn't great). To me, I can't see
shelling out $1300 for a 60-80 meg with 18-23 ms access time - it's
just not worth it! I use the drive for two main purposes - for a
single storage device w/all my appls & data files AND for convenience
of not having to swap disks or worry about system file size
constraints. If you want the best buy with these philosophies in
mind, the CMS SD60 delivers the best bang for the buck.
Finally, I might add their driver software is not the most terrific
(in fact, they suggest formatting the drive at a 5:1 interleave). The
277-N Seagate drive CAN do better than that, as I have just proven to
myself today. Someone graciously sent me the Gigasoft installer which
allows you to format/partition a CDC Wren, Seagate, or Miniscribe
disk. The disktimer II results w/CMS drivers on 1:5 interleave was
about 150, 150, 14. After reformatting with a 3:1 interleave
w/GigaSoft's software, Disktimer II was 95, 95, 11 - a significant
improvement. Obviously, I haven't had the time to actually use the
drive, but things seem to work well. Unfortunately, the SCSI
Accellerator INIT (1.2) doesn't seem to work with GigaSoft's SCSI
drivers (it didn't work with CMS's drivers either, so I think I'm
still ahead of the game).
I bought the drive for $795 at Hardware House (+ ~$15 for shipping).
Although I haven't checked recently, I suspect that price is still
fairly competitive.
Above all, GOOD LUCK! Everyone can get a good drive OR a bad drive no
matter what kind you buy. I've just heard good things about Seagate,
so when I found their drive for $795/60 megs, I jumped at the
opportunity. A buddy of mine bought the same drive at the same time
and the power-supply went bad, got a new one, and had one or two bad
blocks pop up in the last couple months. I think the key here is not
to rely on it as a primary storage device for data files - just
applications that are backed up on floppies.
Let me know what you decide on! (ps - 60 megs is really not as much
as you think it will be - I've got about 15 megs of sounds I
digitized, and the rest are applications; virtually none is used by my
data files.)
------------
>CMS 60 meg
> Uses a Seagate drive. Best feature: good price locally.
> 40 ms access time. 1 year warranty.
I installed two of these 6 months ago. Nice! Sit under the Mac, not too
loud, _good_ software. CMS and Seagate are nice big reliable companies, too.
This is the one I recommend to people in that price range.
-----
I'll offer a quick endorsement of the CMS SD-60. I have had mine for about 9
months now and have had no problems with it. It comes with decent utility
software for the drive, features auto head parking on power-down, fits pretty
well under the Mac Plus I have, and seems fairly speedy. The fan is a bit
obtrusive, though I have now gotten used to it. (How much the noise affects
you will largely be determined by the background noise level of your working
environmenmt.)
So, I am quite happy with mine and purchase another, given the same
circumstances again.
-----------
Sorry - I didn't answer the questions you had about noise
and size. The CMS 60 is very quiet, no screeching, etc.
yet. It is approximateely 2.5" to 3" tall, with the same
footprint as the Mac, though it is white (not beige).
It has a single green LED that indicates disk accesses.
A DIP-switch on the back allows you to set the SCSI ID of
the drive.
Utilities included allow you to :
o Change the hard-disk ICON (whoop-dee-dee)
o Fast SCSI-toSCSI copy
o Non-destructive sector test
o Destructive r/w test
o Display usage map
o Display drive statistics
o Move faulty sectors
------------
I bought a CMS 60-meg drive back in May, and am quite pleased.
I've experience with Apple drives and MacBottom, and I prefer
the CMS to both - good software comes with it for installation
and testing, though you might want to get a disk-defragmenter
and backup utility, as the CMS doesn't come with one.
The CMS appears quite fast, and I've had no problems with it
at all - left on continously since May (with surge protection,
of course :-)
----------------------------------------------------------
I have had my CMS since June, and have had NO problems with it. It
traveled from San Jose to Madison WI in the trunk of my car (bumpy
ride, but no problems with the disk)
Conclusion: All drive models have some bad units. The CMS SD60 is
no exception. But the problems are few and far between.
Its not a FAST drive, its not a HUGE drive, its not a
SILENT drive, but its not bad in all these departments,
and its CHEAP. If you need a cheap drive you probably
won't regret the CMS SD60. (I didn't)
Thanks to everyone for their help and responses!
Rob Verbrugghe
Grad Student at Large Computer Sciences UW-Madison