6500erik@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu (Erik Adams) (10/17/90)
Well, after many phone calls, and wading through the sparse mail I received on the topic, here are the results of my research: NewBridge1 lists for $295, but I've seen it advertised for $199. MacRescue lists for $317, and I don't think anybody sells it but them, or at least I can't find any ads for it in the most recent MacUser. Reports from the field on MacRescue were positive: the people at the company were extrememly helpful, installation was easy, and in some ways the SCSI port performed better than that of a Plus or an SE (I have a letter with some technical stuff that I don't really understand, but that's the gist of it all). Reports from the field on NewBridge1 were non-existant. MacWorld ran an article earlier this year describing these products, but description was all they had: no lab reports, noo comparisons of compatibility, and so on. The only piece of performance information I could get that might cleave between the two of these products has to do with making a ramdisk: MacRescue will allow you to have installed 6 1/2 Mb of memory, using 4 as addressable RAM and the other 2 1/2 as a ramdisk. NewBridge1 does not. Both companies make boards that are similar to the ones under consideration here, but that include a video adapter for installing large screen monitors. Again, they list for about the same price, but the NewBridge2 board at that level _does_ support making a ramdisk. So, its kind of a coin toss: either you can save quite a bit of money and not be able to make a ramdisk on top of your 4 megabytes, or you can spend $100 more and have that option. I'll probably go with MacRescue, because I like options. Erik 6500erik@ucsbuxa.bitnet <or> 6500erik@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu