EBM@MIT-XX.ARPA (12/18/83)
From: J. Eliot B. Moss <EBM@MIT-XX.ARPA> I am considering purchasing a hard disk for my Z80 S100 bus system, and have settled on a controller (the Advanced Digital HDC 1001) which can interface to any ST506 5 1/4" drive or any SA1000 type 8" drive. I would like to buy a drive with average seek time of 30 to 40 ms. (or better), and capacity of at least 20Mb formatted. Anybody have any experience or specific suggestions? I was thinking about a Maxtor 65Mb drive, and believe I can get one for less than $2100. Anything better out there? Thanks .... Eliot -------
jones@fortune.UUCP (12/20/83)
#R:sri-arpa:-1471100:fortune:28000001:000:537 fortune!jones Dec 19 19:14:00 1983 The Maxtor is a nice drive. Other drives to consider are the Atasi, Evotek, and the CDC Wren. A thing to remember about the Maxtor and the Atasi. If seek times are important to you, you should know that both drives wait until receipt of *all* step pulses before initiating the seek. At a 10 us per step rate on a Maxtor, for instance, that can mean an additional 3 ms per average seek. On some controllers, like the Western Digital with slower step rates, that would mean an additional 10+ ms per seek. Dan Jones Fortune Systems
fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (12/22/83)
I have spent the past three months evaluating ST506 drives, and I have
the following recommendations to make, in order:
Micropolis 1304 (30ms, 50Mb)
Quantum Q540 (45ms, 40Mb)
CDC 9415 "wren" (45ms, 35Mb)
My criteria were, in order:
reliability
capacity
speed
I had problems with the Maxtor XT-1000 series (there are two on my desk
next to me, the XT-1065 and the XT-1105, 65 and 105Mb respectively).
They generate lotsa errors, and run real hot. They also hacked the
ST506 interface. They use the low current line for another head select,
and unless you can convice the controller to never set that line true
for the XT-1065, you can't use 'em.
ARPA: fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA
Erik E. Fair {ucbvax,amd70,zehntel,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, California
P.S. This is personal opinion, and should not be construed as a statement
by my employer. I have no connection with any of the manufacturers
listed above.