evans (02/17/83)
Since the last note on the 5" Winchester survey went out more information
has arrived. The ratio of people interested/people with experience is
12/1!
Steve Crandall
mhuxt!evans
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Subject: Re: Winchesters
In-reply-to: Your news article mhuxt.1110 of Sat Feb 5 09:04:21 1983
I had a CORVUS 5Mb disk drive for a while, and can offer these comments:
1. The drive was noisy.
2. It was extremely reliable. I never lost a bit.
3. They were slow to provide updates for the 1.1 release of MSDOS; I had
to use v1.0 longer than I would have liked.
Good luck. I would be interested in getting the results of your survey.
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Subject: ibm winchesters
I was temporarily in the market for a winchester add-on/in for an ibmpc,
so I sent off to a bunch of firms requesting their information. My
priorities were the following:
1. minimum memory - 10 megabytes
2. 5-1/4" replacement for existing floppy drive
3. software compatabile with MS-DOS 1.1
and up-grade available for version 2.0
4. price
5. reputation of firm (good luck)
I received relevant information from the following firms, and rated
them as noted:
1. Davong - available locally - 10Mbyte for $2495
5 Mbyte for $1995
available as either internal or external mounting
** This unit was my first choice **
2. PC2 (that's "pee-see-squared") and Datamac
These two are the same product sold for different
prices from the two companies:
what PC2 DATAMAC
6Mbyte $1895 $2195
12Mbyte $2195 $2695
19Mbyte $2695 $3195
** I would select the PC2 over the Davong if it
were available from a local outlet. **
3. Tecmar - the PC-Mate
Another group in the area has one of these and are
fairly well pleased with it. It is an external box,
but styled to match the appearance of the ibmpc. A 5Mbyte
version is $2495, and teh 10Mbyte is $3495. The expansion
box also adds 5 or 6 slots to the ibmpc's bus, which may
or may not come in useful for your application. This is the
one I would buy if an externally mounted version were
acceptable.
4.Quality Computer Services
These were out because the are externally mounted
and are gairly large. But they have the option
of including tape back-up in the same box. Memory
ranges from 6Mbyte to 80Mbyte (40Mbyte max. with
tape capability).
5. Tallgrass
These, too, are external units. Nothing out of the
ordinary from these folks.
6. Corvus
We had one of these on rental for a while. Definitely
NOT recommended. It's a large external box, and noisy
as the dickens. It was almost too difficult to want to
work near.
7. Computer Dynamics
An 8" drive in an external box, providing 5Mbyte for
a system price of around $1700. This one almos appears
to be a kit, and they talk about a CP/M BIOS disk for
8" SSSD for it.How that fits in with the ibmpc is unclear.
Hope this helps. I would recommend you get a personal-computing
oriented magazine and send letters to various firms; but be sure
you specifically request pricing information and specify ibmpc's
and whatever software compatability you require, otherwise you'll
get a puff sheet and no reall answers from some places.
keith ericson at tektronix.
(please excuse any typos - I've already spent too much time typing this
in - i'm a lousy typist - so I'll send it as is. Feel free to re-distribute
it as you like.)
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