crum@fcom.utah.edu (Gary Crum) (02/11/91)
Gee, I hope Fujitsu's great 5-year warranty causes other manufacturers to increase the length of warranties that come with purchase. For the record, I purchased a Fujitsu M2266SA for $2189 from Mal Steadman at Fast Access (708)530-7749. It's quite similar to the M2263 that has been discussed here, and the same instructions apply w.r.t. jumper settings and connection to NeXTs. The M2266 has an unformatted capacity of 1266 MB and a formatted capacity of 1079 MB with 512 byte sectors. Has anyone reformatted a Fujitsu drive to use 1024 byte sectors? The manual states that the drive can be reformatted in the field to use any even sector size from 108 to 4128 bytes per sector. By the way, one of the early postings mentioning Fast Access stated that the M2266 has a capacity of 1.4 GB. Unfortunately its capacity is in fact just 1.2 GB. If the NeXTdimension works as advertised, even these large capacities may not be enough -- 6 SCSI devices * (1.2 GB / device) == 7.2 GB (reserving one SCSI ID for an 8mm tape drive), and 7.2 GB is enough for just two hours of digital video storage at NTSC resolution using JPEG, using the rough estimate of 1 MB per single uncompressed or 30 compressed frames. Perhaps, if NeXT supports multiple (heterogeneous?) processors in a general fashion in the future, multiple SCSI interfaces per computer will be available. Mal said it's okay to mention the details of the purchase in comp.sys.next, even though the prices we've been talking about are very low and originally intended for volume purchases by Purdue (if I remember correctly). I obtained written confirmation of the Fujitsu 5-year warranty before my purchase by calling Fujitsu at (800)626-4686, and Fujitsu recommended a reseller in Irvine who would sell a single M2266 for about $200 more than Fast Access. I'm looking forward to reading about experiences with using synchronous SCSI for faster transfer rates. Is it true that when synchronous SCSI is used, maximum cable length is reduced? The M2266 manual states that the total cable length is 6 meters for single-ended type SCSI, and 25 meters for differential type SCSI. I can't remember where I read that synchronous SCSI affects cable length -- in NextAnswers, perhaps. I like the option of using long cables, to keep noise away from users. Gary