haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu (John C. Haugeland) (04/10/91)
For people concerned about adding an external hard drive to a 105
NeXTstation, I have following good news about how easy it can be.
I bought a Maxtor LXT340 (3.5", 340mb) in an external case from Alliance
Peripheral Systems for $1349 plus about $20 shipping. They said it was
back ordered, but it would be here in a week. It was.
I bought the SCSI-2 to SCSI-1 cable from NeXT Connection for $45 + $3
shipping. They said it would be here in two days. It was.
I plugged them in, turned the machine on, and got an alert panel saying
the drive was unreadable (just as the NeXT documents said it would)
and asking if I wanted to initialize it. I said yes; it was done in two
minutes. Everything works.
Easiest peripheral I ever added to any computer!
BTW: 1) The drive is extraordinarily quiet (barely increases the sound
level of the basic NeXTstation).
2) I use the Radio Shack power strip that monitors power draw from
one outlet, and turns the other outlets on and off accordingly.
The Maxtor spins up quickly enough that with this setup I can
control everything with the keyboard power switch (that is, I
don't have to turn the external drive on independently first).
Here's my question: Though the drive is rated by the manufacturer as 340
megabytes formatted (512 byte sectors), and this apparently is what
people get on Macintoshes, my system reported only 281 megabytes
available. What happened to the other 60 megabytes? (I gather people
have experienced similar "losses" with other drives, so I doubt that
this is simply a defective drive -- but I'd like to know for sure before
my 30-days return period is up.)
John Haugeland
haugelan@unix.cis.pitt.edu