stephen@bpa.bell-atl.com (Stephen C. Arnold) (03/23/90)
My department is looking at Removable Optical Disk Drives for backup of a Sun 4/280 (soon to be a 4/490 we hope) and a Vax 11/750. We want to hang the drive off of the Sun. Any information on this will be helpful, especially references from people using these systems. Our needs justify getting 1 5.25 in. disk drive. We will be providing the SCSI port. In evaluating the system, I am looking a several things including price, reliablity, recomendations of current users, ease of use, financial stablity of the vender. If you have information, please mail it to me at stephen@temvax.UUCP (..!bpa!temvax!stephen) Thanks Stephen Arnold Senior Programmer Institute For Survey Research Temple University Philadelphia, PA
oscarmir@athena.ee.msstate.edu (Doug Meyer) (03/29/90)
The only tidbit of information I can give you is about Pinnacle Micro. I've been doing a wee bit of investigation into Optical Media, and can share the following. Pinnacle Micro, Inc. Kim Mowry, Sales Coordinator 15265 Alton Parkway Irvine, CA 92718 1-800-553-7070 The have 650MB and 1.2GB systems w/512KB and 1024K sectored media. Read/Write cycle guarantee is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3M cycles if my memory serves me correctly. Talking with them, they claim to have thousands in the field and no disasters to report (not that anybody would ever talk openly about their disasters). They do have their systems installed on every variety of Sun Server and Workstation around, and so it seems that their "Personality Adapter Kits" are high quality. If you're just looking at onesie-twosie purchases, the list price is probably a good measure: 650MB drive for $4695; 1.2GB drive for $9300; Personality Kit for $995; Media for $250. They do have typical discount curves for volume purchases of 2-9 and >10. Also, they have an educational (university) discount program. Other stats are: 65MSec Average Seek (actually more like 50-55Msec on Suns) SCSI ANSI X3.131-1986 Host Interface Burst rate of 1.2 MB/sec. 10+ year Media storage life One year Limited Warranty We are considering trying to get one in here on a trial basis sometime in the not too distant future, but have not moved on it yet. I found Pinnacle to be very cooperative and responsive. We aren't really excited right now because magnetic media technology continues to outstrip magneto-optical technologies both in density and (most interestingly) in access speed. If you're only needing a backup media for a system, I'd recommend 8mm tape where the shoebox costs $4000-5000 and each tape costs about $8. But if you have other needs, like frequent and rapid random accessing of the backed-up data, etc., then perhaps optical is the preferred method. Have fun! Blessings. Douglas Brent Meyer Mississippi State, MS 39762 E-Mail Address:oscarmir@ee.msstate.edu