djd@cs.columbia.edu (Daniel Duchamp) (11/11/89)
Rumor has it that the CDC "Wren" disk is SCSI, is 720MB, and is in the neighborhood of $3000. My questions: 1) How/where do I order them? I've struck out looking through trade mags & The Computer Shopper. 2) What's the catch here? Large capacity, less than $5/MB, SCSI ... it sounds too good to be true. Was this price a short-lived promotion? Do the disks break immediately? Do they make a lot of noise? If you have some of these units, please give me testimony about their quality. I am djd@cs.columbia.edu.
hue@netcom.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) (11/11/89)
In article <442@cs.columbia.edu> djd@cs.columbia.edu (Daniel Duchamp) writes: > >Rumor has it that the CDC "Wren" disk is SCSI, is 720MB, and is in the >neighborhood of $3000. My questions: > 1) How/where do I order them? I've struck out looking > through trade mags & The Computer Shopper. > 2) What's the catch here? Large capacity, less than $5/MB, > SCSI ... it sounds too good to be true. Was this price > a short-lived promotion? Do the disks break immediately? > Do they make a lot of noise? If you have some of these > units, please give me testimony about their quality. 720MB would be a Wren VI. Actually, $3000 is a little high, unless they're throwing in an enclosure and power supply. One of the local stores has 638MB Wren V's for $2495 w/o enclosure or power supply. The price isn't anything special, just a good price. If people are paying more it's either because they buying some hand-holding from the distributor, or they are fools. CDC Wrens (III-VI) seem to be almost bulletproof; I've yet to hear of anyone having a bad exprience with one. My Wren III has performed flawlessly for the few months I had it and survived the recent 7.0 earthquake. I paid $695 new for the 155MB SCSI model. If your enclosure has the front panels in places, they don't make much noise, about average I'd say. The local store I got mine at is called Corporate Systems Center, but I'm not aware of them having any Wren VI's, so it must be some other distributor that has the 720MB drives. CSC is located in Sunnyvale, CA. Their phone number is (408) 737-7312. I have no relationship with them other than that of a satisfied customer. -Jonathan
terryk@pinocchio (Terence Kelleher) (11/12/89)
At Encore, we currently use the Wren V SCSI as the standard drive on our Series 10 machine. Prior to the V we used the IV. They are both excelent drives. They have performed well for us, both in speed and reliability. Prices, I don't know. That's purchasing's problem :-). The Wren series includes many drives, in a wide range of sizes. Most of the drives are available with SCSI or ESDI. Some SCSI drives have a higher capacity by use of ZBR (zoned bit recording). The read/write clock runs faster on outer cylinders, giving a higher density per track. This is not possible with ESDI as the number of sectors per track is not constant and external controllers cannot deal with this. -- Terry Kelleher, Encore Computer Phone: 607-798-9602 Internet: terryk@encore.encore.com
neese@adaptex.UUCP (11/13/89)
>Rumor has it that the CDC "Wren" disk is SCSI, is 720MB, and is in the >neighborhood of $3000. My questions: > 1) How/where do I order them? I've struck out looking > through trade mags & The Computer Shopper. > 2) What's the catch here? Large capacity, less than $5/MB, > SCSI ... it sounds too good to be true. Was this price > a short-lived promotion? Do the disks break immediately? > Do they make a lot of noise? If you have some of these > units, please give me testimony about their quality. > I am djd@cs.columbia.edu. I have seen many of these being used, and have heard of no complaints about them. Once you enable the read ahead in the drive (it comes turned off by default) the drives really scream. Roy Neese Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese merch!adaptex!neese
markb@denali.sgi.com (Mark Bradley) (11/14/89)
In article <442@cs.columbia.edu>, djd@cs.columbia.edu (Daniel Duchamp) writes: > > Rumor has it that the CDC "Wren" disk is SCSI, is 720MB, and is in the > neighborhood of $3000. My questions: > 1) How/where do I order them? I've struck out looking > through trade mags & The Computer Shopper. > 2) What's the catch here? Large capacity, less than $5/MB, > SCSI ... it sounds too good to be true. Was this price > a short-lived promotion? Do the disks break immediately? > Do they make a lot of noise? If you have some of these > units, please give me testimony about their quality. > I am djd@cs.columbia.edu. Try looking for Imprimis drives instead of CDC. You should be able to find these at your local distributor, or call Imprimis in Oklahoma City for the name and # of your local rep. markb -- Mark Bradley "Faster, faster, until the thrill of I/O Subsystems speed overcomes the fear of death." Silicon Graphics Computer Systems Mountain View, CA 94039-7311 ---Hunter S. Thompson ******************************************************************************** * Disclaimer: Anything I say is my opinion. If someone else wants to use it, * * it will cost... * ********************************************************************************
rkd@cci632.UUCP (Ray Downes) (11/14/89)
In article <44529@sgi.sgi.com> markb@denali.sgi.com (Mark Bradley) writes: >In article <442@cs.columbia.edu>, djd@cs.columbia.edu (Daniel Duchamp) writes: Dan .>> Dan .>> Rumor has it that the CDC "Wren" disk is SCSI, is 720MB, and is in the Dan .>> neighborhood of $3000. My questions: Dan .>> 1) How/where do I order them? I've struck out looking Dan .>> through trade mags & The Computer Shopper. Mark B.> Mark B.>Try looking for Imprimis drives instead of CDC. You should be able to Mark B.>find these at your local distributor, or call Imprimis in Oklahoma City Mark B.>for the name and # of your local rep. You might try Seagate, as I believe Seagate bought up, merged with, whatever, Imprimis. The marketing documentation list a company name history as GE > MPI > CDC > Imprimis > Seagate though the documentation I get with our 1.2GB Sabre drives is still of the the CDC flavour. -- Ray Downes, CCI, (716) 482-5000 rutgers!rochester!cci632!rkd
andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume) (11/16/89)
this is a brief summary of the latest offerings from imprimis. as always, i take care but no responsibility for details; call your imprimis rep. IN PARTICULAR, the prices are for me as an at&t person; we get huge volume discounts, you should probably add 50-75% to get a more available price. the data comes from data sheets and salespeople. caveat empor. wren vii: the latest in a long line of disks. 5.25" 1.2GB SCSI disk. average seek 16.5ms, 40KH MTBF. sustained 1.7MB/s. available now as evaluation units at $3294, probable eventual cost of ~$2500 ($2/MB). elite: new range of 5.25" disks (eventually replacing the wren's). comes in SMD, IPI-2 and SCSI-2 interfaces. capacity is 1.2GB (1.5GB scsi). latency is <6ms, average seek 12ms. sustained transfer of 3MB/s. 100KH MTBF. smd evaluation units in jan, scsi production in apr/may ($4.5-5K). sabre 2hp: new version of the regular 8" sabre; 1.2GB and 50KH MTBF. IPI-2 interface, sustained 6MB/s (twice regular sabres). latency 8.3ms, ave seek 15ms. these are shipping now, $7.4K. sabre 2500: 2.5GB, evaluation jan/feb, seek 13ms, MTBF 100KH, 3MB/s, $8K. arraymaster 9058: (base for imprimis's raid). this controller ($15K, at beta sites now) connects to drives (any kind, speed) via IPI-2 and connects to a host via IPI-3. assuming fast drives like sabre 2hp, host data rates are 25MB/s peak, 22MB/s sustained. imprimis will be selling a couple of packages based on this controller; a small pseduo-disk of 5GB, 20MB/s sustained transfer, and a larger disk 16GB, with two 18MB/s sustained i/o ports. both these packages have a lot of internal error correction, a mean time to data loss of ~114yrs. P.S. i note in passing that the WREN V and WREN VI were plagued with early firmware problems regarding bus timeouts on long I/O transfers. these have been fixed (my drives were fixed under warranty) and new drives should be okay. but be wary of older drives.
terryk@pinocchio (Terence Kelleher) (11/16/89)
I dug into my phones file. The Massachusetts Imprimis/Segate/CDC/MPI/GE office can be reached at 617 466 6143. -- Terry Kelleher, Encore Computer Phone: 607-798-9602 Internet: terryk@encore.encore.com