singer@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel) (08/17/88)
At the MacWorld Expo, I was out looking for a hard drive. After some searching, I decided on a Cirrus 40D hard disk, from LaCie, Ltd. The drive is a 40MB SCSI drive; the mechanism is an Epson (!) drive with voice-coil based stepping. I unfortunately don't have the exact specs at hand, but here are some subjective points: The disk drive is EXTREMELY quiet. I can not hear the disk running over my Kensington System Saver and the noise of my keyboard. The drive is also noticeably faster than my old drive, a DataFrame XP30. The construction is not as sturdy as I would like; the case is plastic, and the drive is unsecured inside the case; instead, the mechanism is screwed to mounting plates, which in turn fit into grooves inside the case. There are no indicator lights on the disk drive for power or access; however, the activity indicator is implemented in software; the upper left corner of the screen flashes to indicate disk activity. This would be OK, except that both TOPS and TMON flash the left-hand corner for purposes of their own. I would prefer an LED on the drive. The software is of good quality - the Silver Lining formatter has the ability to install drivers on ANY hard disk, not just Cirrus drives; there is an assortment of drivers, so that you can select the one that provides fastest transfer and greatest reliability for a given hard disk/CPU combination. If you carry the disk to a different machine, say, from a Mac Plus to a Mac II, the drivers default to a handshaking protocol for greatest reliability. It's not necessary to reformat the disk to change the drivers, and you can test the new ones on the spot before installing them. The drive also comes bundled with Silver Server, a remote volume and modem-sharing utility. I haven't tried it yet. The manual is clear and well-written; there's nothing that a careful read wouldn't uncover. Instructions for removing the internal terminators and changing the SCSI address are on separate Xerox'd sheets. The disk drive also comes with a sturdy carrying case. On the down side: The SCSI address can only be changed by moving jumpers inside the drive. This is a bit archaic in the face of software address selection. Unfortunately, the instructions supplied for changing the address bear absolutely no relationship to the innards of my disk drive, and I was unable to find the jumpers for changing the SCSI address. Also, the drive uses a nonstandard connection cable: 25-pin on both ends. This is not much of a problem, since LaCie supplies a cable with the drive, but the cable is a bit short, and finding 25-pin SCSI cables may prove to be a bit difficult. On the whole, I'm pleased with my purchase; the drive is fast and really quiet, seems reliable (though only time will tell), comes with excellent software, and my only gripes are minor ones. The 40MB disk lists at $699, and the prices start at $549 for a 30MB unit. I have no connection with LaCie, Ltd, except as a satisfied customer. --Rich Rich Siegel Quality Assurance Technician THINK Technologies Division, Symantec Corp. Internet: singer@endor.harvard.edu UUCP: ..harvard!endor!singer Phone: (617) 275-4800 x305
shulman@slb-sdr.UUCP (Jeff Shulman) (08/18/88)
This article reminded me to post something. At expo I spoke to Joel
(the president I believe) and mentioned the problems people were
having with the Cirrus 80's when the Mac crashed. He said that the
disk drive manufacturer (Quantim?) finally acknowledge it was a
problem with *their* hardware, not the LaCie software. Thus, LaCie
will give any owner of the old 80Mb drive a trade in for the new
drive.
FYI, I'm still a happy owner of the LaCie 60Mb drive (though I am still
waiting for the manual).
As usual, my opinions.
Jeff
--
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MCI Mail: KILROYtim@ism780c.isc.com (T.W."Tim" Smith, Knowledgian) (08/18/88)
I am not unbiased on this, having written a disk driver and installer program for a competitor of LaCie, but here are my observations. As part of doing mine, I got to look at a large number of the other installers/drivers that are out there. First observations: Have you ever noticed that no two installers use the same user interface? Some are menu driven, some are modal dialogs, some are modeless dialogs. The LaCie one was without a doubt the niftiest one to play with. Second observation: Everyone's driver except Apple's is pretty much the same. LaCie's was the most different of the "everybody is the same" group, with the ability to select how it transfers data. But if you Nosy almost everybodies driver, you will see the same sort of things. Except for Apple's, which look's completely different. It looks like Apple are the only people who did not use the sample SCSI driver from Apple as a basis for their code! Third observation: An occasional crash from an installer program is "normal", if one is doing strange things to the disk. Fourth observation: the one called HDD Install is the most useful when one is developing a driver/installer. This one has a menu that let's you select and execute SCSI commands! This is really neat! I found that better then SCSI Tool for what I was doing. Fifth observation: Real SCSI vs. Fake SCSI. There are several drives that use ST-506 disks with a SCSI to ST-506 card. These cards often require special setup, and are missing various important SCSI commands, such as INQUIRY. Some installers will not support them. If you are thinking of obtaining some random installer and trying to make ones own disk, either make sure your disk is real SCSI, or that the installer you get knows about the card your disk is using. -- Tim Smith Phone: 408-257-8844 Ballard Synergy Corp. Compuserve: 72257,3706 10601 S. DeAnza #212 AppleLink: D1676 Cupertino, Ca, 95014 GEnie: mnementh
tim@ism780c.isc.com (T.W."Tim" Smith, Knowledgian) (08/19/88)
Hmmm. My Mac II has an 80 meg Quantum inside. I have had no problems when I crash the Mac, which I do quite a bit ( developing an Alternate AppleTalk causes lots of crashes ). Do you have any information about which models had the problem, and what the problem was? -- Tim Smith Phone: 408-257-8844 Ballard Synergy Corp. Compuserve: 72257,3706 10601 S. DeAnza #212 AppleLink: D1676 Cupertino, Ca, 95014 GEnie: mnementh