tdk@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (Tim Koschmann) (11/23/88)
Does anyone have a source for inexpensive 300 Mb Disk Packs for Xerox NS file servers? Tim Koschmann SIU, School of Medicine
msriram@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (M.G. SriRam) (11/23/88)
i do not know of a cheaper source but CENTURY MEDIA, Anaheim, CA sells these for $350.00 apiece for new packs and $265.00 each for refurbished ones. their phone number is 714-666-2230.
welch@CIS.OHIO-STATE.EDU (Arun Welch) (11/24/88)
From: JAY FERGUSON <FERGUSON%cgi.com@relay.cs.net>
Subject: RE: 300 Mb disk packs
>Are the Century Media drives direct plug-compatible with the 1186?
Jay,
Your answer made it back to me rather than to the original poster,
but I can answer it anyway...
We're talking about the 300-MB drives for the NS 8000 file servers
here, not for the 1186. These drives come in two forms, the removable
disk pacs, and the non-removable. The removable beasties are a pretty
standard form, and we're using ones scavenged from the rp06 drives on
our dec-20 on our NS servers. The fixed-disk kind come in all kinds
of flavors, and you have to specify the interface you want. The hard
part these days is getting non-scuzzy drives anymore. The kind you
want were originally made by Control Data, who are now a Xerox
company, so you can even get them with a Xerox label on the front, and
the interface is called a Trident interface, which plugs into the
various spots on the server pretty easily. Obviously, when we're
talking fixed-disk kind we're talking about some more hardware than
just the removable platters, and the drive runs a couple grand, rather
than the couple hundred for just the platters.
The only thing I've ever heard about putting big disks on an 1186,
modulo the 80Mb drives, was some experimentation that Eric Schoen was
doing with hooking up the Symbolics bricks to the 1186. I'm not sure
what sort of success he had, maybe someone at Sumex can expand.
...arun"John_D._Sybalsky.AISNorth"@XEROX.COM (11/24/88)
One can, of course, also get 190Mb Maxtor drives for the 1186, from Envos. --John Sybalsky
schmidt@SUMEX-AIM.STANFORD.EDU (Christopher Schmidt) (11/24/88)
The hard part these days is getting non-scuzzy drives anymore.
Actually, the ST-412 disks used by the 1186 are the same as used by the
IBM PC AT, so there are hundreds of vendors. Look in a magazine like
"Computer Shopper." You would have to do some fiddling in the Configuration
utility to use a disk not already in the menu of drives Xerox uses. They are
way cheaper than SCSI disks because they provide so little in the way of a
controller.
The kind you want were originally made by Control Data, who are
now a Xerox company...
I think Xerox owns a smaller percentage of Century Data than they used to.
...hooking up the Symbolics bricks to the 1186.
As I recall Eric's experiment, he formated the bigger disk for less than
120 Mb because he didn't know if the file system could cope with more. Since
Xerox later sold a bigger disk, I gather that current software would support a
bigger disk. I've never tried one.
--Christopher