glenn@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (G Geers) (01/10/90)
Hi, just a couple of quick questions. We are considering purchasing some new disks for one of our xenix systems so I strolled into a computer shop that is quite close to where I live only to find that they are the Australian Seagate distributor. Consequently they handed me their latest brochure. After looking through this I came across two drives which appear to be quite good. They are: 1. ST4144R 122.7Mb formatted, ST412 interface (<- supplants ST506 ??) 2. ST1144A 125.8Mb formatted, AT interface The ST1144A is not due for release in Australia until the end of the month. Looking through the Xenix release notes I am led to believe that the ST4144R will run under Xenix. What controller do people recommend ? It is an RLL drive but I don't think that matters. The ST1144A is a 3.5" drive with a maximum(!) seek time of 20ms which is quite quick. The problem is that the AT interface is not mentioned anywhere in the Xenix docs. Has anyone used this drive (I'm guessing it's been released in the US or Europe, we're always a little behind.) ? Does anyone know how an AT interface differs from the standard ST412 ? Will Xenix support an AT interface. Seagate also sell a lot of SCSI interface drives but our version of Xenix (386AT) does not have the drivers. Replies to the net or email to glenn@extro.ucc.su.oz would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance, Glenn glenn@extro.ucc.su.oz Glenn Geers Dept. Theoretical Physics Uni. of Sydney Sydney 2006 Australia
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (01/11/90)
In article <1990Jan9.234525.12280@metro.ucc.su.oz.au> glenn@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (G Geers) writes: | After looking through this I came across two drives which appear to be quite | good. They are: | 1. ST4144R 122.7Mb formatted, ST412 interface (<- supplants ST506 ??) | 2. ST1144A 125.8Mb formatted, AT interface | Looking through the Xenix release notes I am led to believe that the ST4144R | will run under Xenix. What controller do people recommend ? It is an RLL drive | but I don't think that matters. Only in that you want an RLL controller. I suggest the WD1006VSR2, since the track buffering is in hardware, and it is much faster with Xenix than Adaptec (at least in my systems). | | The ST1144A is a 3.5" drive with a maximum(!) seek time of 20ms which is quite | quick. The problem is that the AT interface is not mentioned anywhere in the | Xenix docs. Has anyone used this drive (I'm guessing it's been released in | the US or Europe, we're always a little behind.) ? Does anyone know how an | AT interface differs from the standard ST412 ? Will Xenix support an AT | interface. This is certainly not common yet, and unless you get an answer from SCO I would consider it a chance to be at the bleeding (uh, that's cutting) edge of peripherals. To make it worse, some ads say AT interface and means ST412, some mean the interface Seagate is pushing. Conner is also delivering a small, fast, 204MB (as I recall) drive with builtin controller, which they call IDE. One distributor says that's the same as Seagate's AT interface, another says it's not. If you try this out, please post. One real question is if you can run multiple drives with Xenix. If you don't have a controller does each drive take a slot for the bus interface board? One distributor said "one bus unit for all drives," one said "one bus unit per drive," one said "you can only run one drive, but they're so big you'll never need another," and one said "unix? Sure these work with any DOS application!" I have no trouble getting answers to these questions, just in getting the same answer from more than one supplier, or any useful answer from anyone. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "The world is filled with fools. They blindly follow their so-called 'reason' in the face of the church and common sense. Any fool can see that the world is flat!" - anon