alexis@dasys1.UUCP (Alexis Rosen) (07/30/88)
Recently, Mark Cookson wrote that SuperMac uses Wren III disks for their
150 MB drives while CMS did not. In addition he stated that SM uses sputtered
thin-film while CMS uses plated. This is incorrect.
The hardware in the CMS 150 is the same as SuperMac's: the Wren III (which
is, for my money, the best drive around today).
The comparison Mark may have seen was probably between a SuperMac 150 and
a CMS *140*, which is a rodime unit, half-height instead of full, and other-
wise not nearly as nice as the Wren (50% slower avg. access; several times
slower tranfer rate).
In case anyone's interested, the CMS 150 can go inside a Mac II. It's much
cheaper than the SuperMac. On the other hand, SuperMac does bundle some nice
(and some not-so-nice) software with their drives, which might tip the
balance. I have avoided dealing with SM recently because there was no
overriding reason to buy their stuff, and I know that their financial situ-
ation, while not likely to cause them to shut down, might cause a fair amount
of instability in the near future. So far, CMS has been ultra-reliable.
Anyone have any new info on the SMS/SuperMac situation?
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Alexis Rosen {allegra,philabs,cmcl2}!phri\
Writing from {harpo,cmcl2}!cucard!dasys1!alexis
The Big Electric Cat {portal,well,sun}!hoptoad/
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Best path: uunet!dasys1!alexisFabian@cup.portal.com (08/02/88)
Greetings, SuperMac is alive and well, remember most of the problems with have been written about concern our parent company Scientific Micro Systems (SMS). SuperMac is doing so well that we can't keep up with the demand for our 19" Trinitron monitors. Should you have any questions concerning SMS, you should contact SMS's corporate communications dept. Fabian Ramirez SuperMac Technology fabian@cup.portal.com sun!cup.portal.com!fabian
Mark_Peter_Cookson@cup.portal.com (08/05/88)
Did I say 150??? I meant 140, as the only drives I looked at were external, and the 150 is interal (I take it from your message). Speaking of hard drives... I got my Rodime 140 Plus in the mail the other and pluged it in and it worked fine (except for having an international keyboard installed). But a leaflet said to reformat it with System 4.2. So I did. After that it was no end of trouble. It would not come back to the finder, when it tried it just showed a blank menu bar and screen and hung. So I refomated it again and again with a perfect 4.2 system and it still would not work. Then I made the mistake of initlizing it in system 6.0 (on accident as an 800K floppy!) and then whenever I came back to the finder or their install program the Mac would bomb, so after calling their OH number and getting the number for their gone home for the day tech support I started to work on the drive again. This time I booted up and then turned on the Rodime while I was in the finder and then launched their installer. IT WORKED! I could reformat the HD and now it worked again. But it still would not come back to the finder for me. So I copied all my stuff onto the 140 (two 20 meg HDs worth) and then erased the one SCSI 20 meg HD and made it one huge startup disk (also it had my BBS on it) and used the 140 for the downloads disk. This was working well, but the next day I called tech support to see if I couldn't make the thing work in the Finder (it would come up fine in the finder, just as long as the finder was not being run off the Rodime). They said that I would have to initlize it under system 4.2 and finder 6.0 (I had used 4.2 and 6.1 to initlize it all the other times). So I was about to when I remembed that I couldn't because I about 20 meg of stuff that wasn't backed up. So I launched Fastback V1.02 (FastBack comes with Rodime drives, but I had bought it earier to use so I was using the commercial version (I am not sure if there is a difference)). I got through 13 disks when FastBack gave some weird error and stopped. It wouldn't start again complaining that it couldn't open the Rodime drive. So I quit and it said that the Finder was busy or dammaged. Great! I reboot with a floppy and not only does it want to erase the Rodime (This disk is dammaged.) but it also wanted to erase the Photon 20 that FastBack should not have been doing anything to. No I said each time it asked (like every 5 seconds in the finder, I guess it kept on scanning the SCSI port, got boring after a while though). So I ran out and bought SUM. SUM got the disks back onto floppies, but now the finder no longer even acknowledged their presence. It was going from bad to worse real fast. I called Rodime and they said that "Oh, you have a Dove SCSI port don't you?" "Yes," I replied. "Oh, FastBack doesn't work with the Dove SCSI port, they are working on it." Great I thought, isn't it a little late now? You knew I had a Dove SCSI port when I first called you, you should have warned me, after all, it is the backup program you ship with the drive. And why didn't it like the Rodime? It never had a problem with the Photon... Oh well, just another in a long list of hardships... So, after I get all the stuff back from the drives and onto floppies and reinitlize the Rodime, I find that the Rodime wants to be initlized every other time I come to the finder (initlize it once, then boot, then come to the finder and shutdown, then boot and the drive wants to be reinitlized again). And the Photon has been so badly damaged that the only thing the install program for it knows is its number of blocks (it forgot the interleve, the number of cylinder, the number of the first block, the step rate and so on, and also the defects on the HD). So the next day I call Warp 9, there 800 number is gone, so I call their real number and talk to tech support, and she gives me all the info on the drive and how to get it back. Well, what she said didn't work, but after pluging in her numbers and fooling with it, I got it back and it is now semi usable. The only problem is that the defects are still running loose on the HD. I have no way to find them as their tester that comes with it only checks sectors and won't find bad blocks. Great, yet another call to MN at 2PM (AT&T is going to love me this month, about 10 calls to Florida and Minisoda for tech support). I talk to another lady (in fact, I never once talked to a man at Warp 9, weird...) and she said that (after I asked her) that she would send me the program that the factory uses to find the bad blocks. I should get that in a few days. In the mean time I have a 3.5 meg hard disk, as the finder hits what must be the first bad block and gets an error and won't write anthing more to the drive. I am sure by now that if you have read all the message you are saying this guy had one hell of a bad 3 days. And yes, you are right. But, the moral of this story is that FastBack and Rodime drives don't work with Dove SCSI ports. (Though the people at Rodime never said it wouldn't, the people at Programs Plus said that it didn't when I asked for a RAN (and tried to charge me 20% because they said it was ordered in error! Heck no! If the woman who took my order had asked me if I had a Mac Plus or just a SCSI port I could have told her, but she never asked, and no one ever said the Rodime didn't work with Dove's SCSI port). So, if you have FastBack and a Dove port, I would be careful. Even though it never did anything to my Photon 20, I am distrustful of it now... I hope no one EVER has to go through what I have been through this week... Mark Cookson