ericz@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Eric Zamost) (07/25/90)
I have arranged the purchase, here's the information: (I am sending this to all of the people who responded to my first request for information, those who responded to the anouncement about the purchase, and am posting it to the newsgroups since I expect some of the mail to bounce.) I have arranged that the dealer will sell them for $950, and accept orders from anyone who mentions this deal. He accepts MC and Visa, and he can ship outside the US. In all cases he will require the buyer to pay shipping and any appropriate sales taxes. Here are the specs again, with some additional information: (This should answer some of the questions people e-mailed me.) CDC-Imprimis Wren IV Part #94171-307 (same as 94171-350, now being sold by Seagate as ST4350N) New, 1 year warranty Full height, 5.25", Auto-park Drive-only (no external case or power supply) SCSI Interface 320 Meg formatted capacity 16ms average access time Rated MTBF: 100,000 hours To buy one of these, call ICS (Integrated Component Supply) at 805-257-6900, and ask for Tom (the president of the company). You will have to mention my name to get this price. I didn't bother to explain about the net to him, so don't be surprised if he doesn't know what you are talking about if you mention it. They are "bare" drives, so if you need them external (for Mac, Sun, Amiga, etc.) you will need to get a case, power supply, etc. They say that they will sell the drives in a case for an additional $250 - this is something I payed litle attention to, since mine will be internal. It may be worth finding your own case - I don't know. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | ericz@ucscb.ucsc.edu - Eric Zamost - (408) 426-9530 | | 35 Leonardo Lane, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 | ---------------------------------------------------------------------
rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) (07/26/90)
In article <5429@darkstar.ucsc.edu> ericz@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (Eric Zamost) writes: >CDC-Imprimis Wren IV >Part #94171-307 (same as 94171-350, now being sold by Seagate as ST4350N) >320 Meg formatted capacity I doubt that CDC uses 2 different article numbers to describe one article. Thus it is obvious that 94171-307 and 94171-350 are not the same. If CDC uses the same numbering scheme as in the Wren V, VI and VII series, as I think, the number after the dash shows the unformatted capacity, i.e. in this case 307 MB. So the drive can hardly have 320 formatted capacity. Most ppl tend to forget, that 1 MB = 1024^2 bytes and neither 1000*1024 (which would be 1000 KB) nor 1000^2 bytes. In computers there is not the metric system used where m and mega stand for 1000^2. Note also, that in the metric system the letters are lower case where as the K in KB and the M in MB are upper case... Nevertheless this could be a good deal... I just hate it if ppl look at the first few digits of a "n bytes free"-message and call it formatted capacity in MB Ronald from Europe and with typos... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernhard Shaw | rca@cs.brown.edu or antony@browncog.bitnet
olson@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) (07/29/90)
In <45808@brunix.UUCP> rca@cs.brown.edu (Ronald C.F. Antony) writes: ... | If CDC uses the same numbering scheme as in the Wren V, VI and VII | series, as I think, the number after the dash shows the unformatted | capacity, i.e. in this case 307 MB. So the drive can hardly have 320 | formatted capacity. | Most ppl tend to forget, that 1 MB = 1024^2 bytes and neither | 1000*1024 (which would be 1000 KB) nor 1000^2 bytes. In computers | there is not the metric system used where m and mega stand for 1000^2. | Note also, that in the metric system the letters are lower case where | as the K in KB and the M in MB are upper case... Wrong on two counts. The number WAS (before Seagate bought Imprimis) the formatted capacity in Megabytes, where a Mb was defined as 1000000 (10^6) bytes, NOT 1048576 (2^20). Immediately after Seagate bought Imprimis, the 94171-344 was renamed 94171-376, where 376 was the unformatted capacity. The only 94171-307 I had seen was a very early version of the 94171-344; so I can't shed any more info on that. Depending on how the drive was formatted, the 94171-344 had a formatted capacity of ~644000 sectors ~= 322 2^20 Mb ~= 337 10^6 Mb I seem to recall that the 344 Mb value was with no spares whatsoever, and also included the cylinders reserved for the embedded controllers Many mfg's are defining their Mb as 10^6, including most of the 3 1/2" drive mfg's. To avoid ambiguity, talking about number of available blocks is often useful (assuming the blocks are 512 bytes, which is USUALLY how the numbers are quoted). -- Dave Olson Life would be so much easier if we could just look at the source code.