mcdonald@sfu_dipper.cs.sfu (12/12/87)
First of all, for those people who don't like to spend a great deal of time reading notes, I will summarize this one--STAY AWAY FROM CMS. Now in more detail . . . Some time ago I was investigating drives for use with the Mac II, and called one distributor for info and pricing on the CMS pro-40 internal. Well, surprise, they had a pro-60 in stock, which was an overstock item, and they sold it to me for $975US, less than their price for the 40 meg drive. Stupidest purchase I ever made. Now where shall I start . . . there were so MANY things wrong with this product. Well, first of all, CMS has what I consider a very strange warranty. They guarantee their drives for one year, not from the time you purchase the drive, but from the time they ship it. If it happens to sit on a dealer's shelf for a few months, well, tough. Secondly, the drive as shipped and according to instructions could not be securely mounted in the Mac II! The screws provided were too long, and their stems hit the drive case before they could be tightened. I called CMS, and was told that a new bracket had been developed and would be shipped to me right away. OK, said I, at the time, but I should really have clued in right at the time--this drive design had obviously NEVER UNDERGONE AN ACTUAL TEST as to its fitness for use in the Mac II, otherwise such a ridiculous error would never have got out of the factory. Anyways, the tech I talked to told me to use the drive as was, until the bracket arrived. Stupid error number two on my part, I listened to him. When the bracket came, and I took the drive out to install it, I found that vibration from the drive had caused three of the four mounting screws to loosen to the point where they had almost come out--one dropped off as I was taking the drive out. Another day and they would have been rolling around on my circuit board, and I have a feeling CMS would have refused responsibility for any damages. Then there was the software. The software provided with the drive had a default interleave setting of 4:1 for the Mac II--and WOULD NOT ALLOW THIS SETTING TO BE CHANGED. I called CMS and complained, and they sent out a newer version of the software which corrected this, but it still turned out that the fastest interleave on this model was 2:1, which did not make me at all happy. As well, the drive had a very noticeable high-frequency vibration, which was strong enough to cause smokelike wavering patterns on my AppleColour Monitor. I have encountered another CMS 60 meg drive, an external, which had a similar amount of vibration. (FYI the internal is a Seagate 277, and I assume the external is the same.) In any case, this amount of vibration was not at all suitable for an internal drive. Another lapse in testing. When I called CMS to complain, they said that there was no point in sending me another drive, I might have the same problem again. Wonderful. Finally, though I did not realize it at the time, the drive dropped sectors with clockwork regularity. Six or more sectors in the three weeks of infrequent use I gave it, no bumps, no jostles. This was enough, I had put up with this monster for far too long, and I wanted to get rid of it. The company I had bought it from was acting rather antsy about giving me an actual refund (very strong repair or replace policy), so I considered going to a CMS 80 meg. I called CMS to find out what the base drive in the 80 was (I didn't want anymore Seagates) and was told, quote, "Well if you want to know that, you'll have to buy one, won't you?" OK, enough, I called the distributor and ranted and raved (for about a week), until they agreed to give me my money back. The whole episode cost me about $150-200 (Cdn) in phone bills, shipping costs, and so forth, plus a huge chunk of my time. I do not want, ever, to have anything to do with CMS again. They produced a poor quality product which, as evinced by the lack of a mounting bracket and the ridiculous initialization software, was given virtually no testing before being put on the market. If you want good quality for your money, then I would advise STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. I myself plan to purchase a Jasmine inner 50, after cooling down over Christmas. Hope the above info is of use. K. McDonald
moriarty@tc.fluke.COM (Jeff Meyer) (12/15/87)
An addenum:
I have also heard nasty stories about CMS drives in Mac IIs (and less nasty
stories about Jasmines in IIs, also); I think I'd be careful if you're
planning to install one inside the II.
However, I know of at least 12 people who own external (and in two cases,
internal) 40 and 60 Meg CMS drives for the Mac+ and SEs and have had no
problems whatsoever. One is a person who's had a BBS running off of a CMS
40 Meg for the last five months, 24 hours a day.
So while I would certainly keep a cautious eye on the Mac II drives, I
personally would have few qualms about buying one for my Mac+.
"See? You NEED me... like Skipper needs Gilligan!"
-- The Flaming Carrot
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, allegra, hplsla, lbl-csam}!fluke!moriarty
CREDO: You gotta be Cruel to be Kind...
<*> DISCLAIMER: Do what you want with me, but leave my employers alone! <*>rfortier@palladium.UUCP (Richard W. Fortier) (12/15/87)
In article <57900016@sfu_dipper> mcdonald@sfu_dipper.cs.sfu writes: > >First of all, for those people who don't like to spend a great deal of time >reading notes, I will summarize this one--STAY AWAY FROM CMS. > >Now in more detail . . . > >Some time ago I was investigating drives for use with the Mac II, and called >one distributor for info and pricing on the CMS pro-40 internal. Well, >surprise, they had a pro-60 in stock, which was an overstock item, and they >sold it to me for $975US, less than their price for the 40 meg drive. Stupidest >purchase I ever made. > [ stuff deleted] > >Hope the above info is of use. > >K. McDonald The article goes on to explain in great detail the trials and tribulations the author had with installing the CMS drive, with finding very outdated software on the drive, and in general the problems had when trying to make it work. This was something I felt I couldn't let stand, since my own experience with CMS is that they are WONDERFUL! I called CMS about a month ago to ask questions about their drives, and was referred to Daryl Pipkin (extension 238). He was quite knowledgeable about the drives and was EXTREMELY helpful and patient. I asked several questions about performance and got detailed answers, right down to DiskTimer II numbers. I asked which disk drives their products were based on and got straight answers. I asked specifically about the Pro-60, and Daryl told me he didn't recommend it for the Mac II because it was slower than some of the other drives and couldn't keep up with the II. If you are an Apple certified developer, you can buy your drives direct from CMS; I did and the arrived within a week. In short, it was one of the most pleasant organizations I've ever dealt with. I suspect the problems are more with the dealer than with CMS. The clue is in the first paragraph, where the distributor convinces the original author to buy a Pro-60 which is overstocked, and has probably been on the shelf long enough that it PREDATED the Mac II, so of course it couldn't reasonably be expected to work very well with the Mac II. The later comments in the article: >Secondly, the drive as shipped and according to instructions could not be >securely mounted in the Mac II! The screws provided were too long, and their >stems hit the drive case before they could be tightened. . . > [more stuff deleted] > >Then there was the software. The software provided with the drive had a >default interleave setting of 4:1 for the Mac II--and WOULD NOT ALLOW THIS >SETTING TO BE CHANGED. I called CMS and complained, and they sent out a >newer version of the software which corrected this, but it still turned out >that the fastest interleave on this model was 2:1, which did not make me at >all happy. [more stuff deleted] convince me that this is the case. I agree the author got burned, and even that the author got somebody at CMS who was less than helpful with technical questions, but I believe the real culprit here is a less-than-scrupulous dealer; let's lay the blame where it belongs. -- --- Richard W. Fortier, Epoch Systems, Marlboro MA {linus!alliant, harvard!cfisun}!palladium!rfortier
cm450s02@uhccux.UUCP (Jeff T. Segawa) (12/16/87)
In article <57900016@sfu_dipper> mcdonald@sfu_dipper.cs.sfu writes: > >First of all, for those people who don't like to spend a great deal of time >reading notes, I will summarize this one--STAY AWAY FROM CMS. > Darned shame you had such problems with the CMS's products. The odd thing is that I've had a Seagate based 20 meg on my Mac II, (since relocated to the Mac II) for about 8 months and have had no problems. I've been using version 3.2A of the utility software and have had no problem with lost sectors, though the very early software (the stuff that said "by CMC") did seem kind of flakey. As I understood it, some of the internal drives, like the Pro 80, were intended to be bolted directly to the metal platform that also holds the floppy drive USING SPACERS. If the spacers were missing, it would account for the fact that the screws seemed much too long. The person answering the phone told you to buy the drive to find out who's mechanism they were using? Tacky. I've never tried getting phone support, rather I go via MACUS (on Compuserve). Charles McConathy of CMS does go through the message section frequently, and has been very helpful as far as software updates and Mac II installations go. Why the person answering the phone should have been so secretive as to what drive was being used is beyond me, since CMS's current full color ads clearly show that (in the case of the 80's, anyway) they are using a Quantum.
neil@beowulf.ucsd.edu (Neil Rhodes) (12/16/87)
I'd just like to put in a word about my experiences with CMS. My experiences have been completely positive. My development hard disk had a fatal crash in October, and I needed a replacement immediately. I had heard that CMS had developer pricing, so I called about their 80meg Mac II internal. Like most other 80-Meg drives, it is a Quantum. I ordered it that day, payed rush charges ($50), and received it the next day COD. It has worked flawlessly, installed with no problem. Only problems were: the floppy with utilities was unreadable (the drive came pre-formatted, though, so I could boot without needing the floppy), and the manual claimed that the 80-Meg did NOT auto- park on power-down. I called CMS and they sent a new floppy out, and acknowledged that their manual was in error. A friend of mine has one of their internal 100-Meg drives. He's only had it for a couple of weeks, but he too has had no problem. In summary, I would buy from them any day (and in fact my business partner is buying one today). Neil Rhodes Palomar Software, Inc. c/o UC San Diego neil@sdcsvax.ucsd.edu
jww@vaxine.UUCP (Jeff Walker) (12/17/87)
We recently got 3 CMS drives and a tape backup system in for evaluation. The 40M, 80M, and 100M. The tape backup is the 60M 1/4" streaming tape drive (based on the TEAC). I am very impressed with the quality of the software which comes with the drives. It is easy to use yet powerful. It lets you do the standard stuff like format, initialize, and install CMS's drivers, but also let you do useful stuff like verify the disk, display the allocation map, and move bad blocks. They have this one test called "the overnight test" which writes to each block and verifies, looking for bad blocks (wiping your drive, of course). The backup software is very good as well. It allows you to a file by file or image backup. The file by file is intuitive. It looks like the normal "Open File" dialog, but also allows you to "Select All" or toggle particular folders. The speed of the driver is good also: 32M in 10 min. My only complaint about CMS is having 2 different floppies containing system software. One for the lower capacity drives, and one for the larger drives. A drive comes with the appropriate floppy, but its one more thing to worry about when you are shipping different drives with each system. -Jeff Walker Automatix (617) 667-7900 vaxine.UUCP!jww Disclamer: I claim dis claim to be true. Food for thot: "Stupid is relative" -jww
fons@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (12/20/87)
I just wanted to put my two bits in. I have had a CMS Pro43-II since august of this year in my Mac II and other than needing to zap the pram a couple of times due to rabid non Mac II compatible software, my hard disk has performed very nicely. I am curious to know if my hard drive autoparks at power down though as the manual doesn't mention it and the utility program is for all of CMS's drives. A recent article in Macworld on hard drives for the macs said it DID autopark so I feel a little better, but 'I gots to know' to quote a line from a Clint Eastwood movie. I am also curious to know if there are any software updates to the utilities or drivers (my copy says version 3.2F on the disk). This is an internal drive made by Seagate I think that has 28ms access time. reply to: Fons@uiucvmd (bitnet) fons@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu (internet) fons%vmd@uiuc.csnet (csnet) ihnp4!uiucuxc!fons@vmd (usenet)
cm450s02@uhccux.UUCP (Jeff T. Segawa) (12/21/87)
In article <46100042@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> fons@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes: > >I am also curious to know if there are any software >updates to the utilities or drivers (my copy says version 3.2F on the disk). I don't know if 3.2F is the latest, but it's more recent than mine (3.1A). CMS seems to update the software several times a year. This is my 3 or 4th update within 1 year, and I only bought the drive around February of this year! Updates seem to be free. Got 2 updates from the dealer and another directly from CMS. Don't know for sure, but I think that all of the Pro series of drives auto-parks itself. This is important for any Mac II drive since there is no way that you are going to be able to park the heads, return to the finder then select "shut down" without unparking the heads again! I have a non auto parking hard disk and I'm forced to use the hardware on/off switch in the back.