steve@mstar.UUCP (Steve Wilson) (06/02/88)
I'm considering buying a Micah XT-20 (or -40, or -60, depending on bank supplies :-)) because it seems well-suited to traveling between my wife's office and home (fits in the carrying case, has automatic park and lock for the heads, shock-mounted, etc). Does anyone have any experience with these? Do they live up to the admirable advertising claims? Should I be considering something else? -- Steve Wilson, Morning Star Technologies, Inc. ...!cbosgd!mstar!steve
masticol@styx.rutgers.edu (Steve Masticola) (06/02/88)
Executive summary: I own a Micah XT-20. I had some initial problems, but am quite satisfied with it now. I bought an XT-20 about two months ago. I liked their performance numbers (they claim 26 ms average access; I've clocked it at 35 using a PD utility), shock mounting, head park on power down feature, 2-year warranty, and 800 service number. When I received my XT-20, the drive wouldn't boot unless it had been running for about 5 minutes. I sent it back; they sent it back to me without having fixed the problem. (In all fairness, I'm not sure I really communicated the problem to the tech very well, and it's an easy one to overlook in testing.) In any case, I had sent the drive back for a refund and called Jasmine to order one of their 20-meg drives. Then I looked again. Jasmine has no hardware head parking, no shock mounts, no 800 number, a 1-year warranty, and much worse rated performance for their 20-meg drives. I called Micah again, and got them to agree to test the drive by powering it up twice from an 8-hour power-off period. They must have found something wrong the second time, because they shipped me a new drive which works perfectly. Micah really seems to be dedicated to reliability and customer support rather than slick advertising, which I like very much. On the minus side, the manual is rather mediocre, and their chief engineer has some wierd ideas which border on the doctrinaire. (For instance, the drive contains no MOVs; his claim is that they can explode and damage the drive 'tronics. My claim is that they'd only blow up if _really_ overstressed, and that the explosion could be contained by placing the MOV strategically.) Micah is also a small company; how long will they be around? Who can tell? Despite these minor shortcomings, I think they're doing pretty well, and I'm happy with their product. - Steve Masticola (masticol@paul.rutgers.edu)