herbw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Herb Weiner) (10/24/90)
Mac Direct (800-621-8461) has been advertising the following drive in
MacWeek:
Fujitsu 680 MB 5.25 inch Full Height Internal Drive
Including Brackets, Cables, Software
16 ms access time, 200,000 hours MTBF, 5 year warranty
This sounds like a very good deal! Can anybody provide information on
the following:
1. How does the transfer rate of this drive compare with other drives?
(Either relative or absolute numbers would be useful here.)
2. What is the noise level of this drive, compared to other drives?
3. Is this drive compatible with the Mac II fx?
4. Does Silver Lining support this drive?
5. Is this drive compatible with A/UX 2.0?
6. Has anyone had any experience (positive or negative) with Mac Direct?
I'll summarize responses if there is interest.
Herb Weiner (herbw@midas.wr.tek.com)alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (10/24/90)
In article <3895@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM> herbw@midas.WR.TEK.COM (Herb Weiner) writes: >Mac Direct (800-621-8461) has been advertising the following drive in MacWeek: > >Fujitsu 680 MB 5.25 inch Full Height Internal Drive >Including Brackets, Cables, Software >16 ms access time, 200,000 hours MTBF, 5 year warranty >[...] >1. How does the transfer rate of this drive compare with other drives? > (Either relative or absolute numbers would be useful here.) >2. What is the noise level of this drive, compared to other drives? >3. Is this drive compatible with the Mac II fx? >4. Does Silver Lining support this drive? >5. Is this drive compatible with A/UX 2.0? >6. Has anyone had any experience (positive or negative) with Mac Direct? I can't comment on the quality of recent Fujitsu drives. However, I know a lot about Wrens. You can get a 650MB (or thereabouts) Seagate/Imprimis Wren VII for about $2200-2300 from APS of the like. Here's how it stacks up: Access time is 15-16ms. Transfer rate is >2MB/sec sustained. This is where the large Wrens excel. It's certainly possible that the Fujitsu does as well, but I'd be surprised. Traditionally, everyone lags Imprimis here by quite a bit. SCSI command latency is also very very good with the MacWrens (sorry, no numbers handy). This is another area where Imprimis usually leads. Of course, the fast transfer rate won't be perceptible until Apple fixes their abysmal handling of SCSI DMA in A/UX, but they are working on that at this very moment... I'm certain they'll have it done by 2.0.1, and possibly before then. As for warranty, the Wrens lose here. Only one year. Still, they're built like tanks. Between all of my Macs, and all of my clients' Macs, I must have over 100 of them that are more than 1 year old. Many are two or three years old. I've only had to send three of them back for repairs, and all of those were within the first year. One man's opinion... --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix {cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis