name@portia.Stanford.EDU (tony cooper) (02/15/90)
There seems to be a mistaken belief that all SyQuest mechanisms are the same and so which manufacturer you buy from makes no difference. This is not true. There are at least two mechanisms: i) The old one with 25ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures of 12000 hours. ii)The new one with 21ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures of 30000 hours. The new mechanism hasn't been available for long but many manufacturers are selling it. Many are selling the old one still. I believ that one way you can tell the new machanism is that the red light is now orange. But this may not be true and there may be more than two versions around anyway. A good way is to do an inquiry command and look at the ROM revision. A bad way is to measure the actual seek time. This is bad because the seek times agiven are nominal only, actual times may differ. Ask the manufacturer. If they don't know then don't buy. Buy only the new mechanism. It's better and it's cheaper. That's the way it happens in this business. Tony Cooper tony@popserver.stanford.edu
ph@cci632.UUCP (Pete Hoch) (02/16/90)
In article <9200@portia.Stanford.EDU>, tony cooper writes: > There seems to be a mistaken belief that all SyQuest mechanisms are the > same and so which manufacturer you buy from makes no difference. This > is not true. Just thought I would point out something that may not be obvious. All of the manufacturers that use SyQuest mechanisms in their products are not the same. For example. A friend of mine purchaced a PLI unit 18 months ago. Last week it died. There was no reaction to anything. He called PLI and they gave him a place to send it for repaire. They called back and told him it would cost $550, or they would mail him back the dead drive if he he paid $35 shipping. I would call this very bad service. Instead he called MicroTech and purchaced a new drive which comes with; one 50-50 SCSI cable, one 25-50 SCSI cable, a cartridge, and a terminator, all for about $800. It also comes with a two year warranty. Pete Hoch
martya@cpl-mfh.UUCP (Marty Adelman) (02/16/90)
*** *** In article <9200@portia.Stanford.EDU>, *** name@portia.Stanford.EDU (tony cooper) writes: *** >There seems to be a mistaken belief that all SyQuest mechanisms are the >same and so which manufacturer you buy from makes no difference. This >is not true. > >There are at least two mechanisms: >i) The old one with 25ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures > of 12000 hours. >ii)The new one with 21ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures > of 30000 hours. > While you definately should be concerned about the hardware your getting the other major concern is the software. A friend of mine ordered a 45 meg removable from Ehman for his //ci. When he received it, he found that the software would not run on his machine, so he moved it to his SE. Guess what? The software conflicted with that well written init from Apple for the CD Rom. (which also doesn't work on the //ci.) Well he contacted Ehman and they stalled him cause they didn't have a fix. Finally he had to return the drive before the money back warrantee expired. He ordered a microtech, who are on back order waiting for new Syquest mechanisms (the faster ones.) Microtech has said that Syquest shipped a bad batch of drives in January and had to recall them (I don't know how true that is.) Microtech did guarrantee that their drive would work with the //ci and the CD-rom (not necessarily on the same machine 8-). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marty Adelman, PH.D. Phone: (716) 887-4572 Director Computer Systems Internet: cpl-mfh!martya@acsu.buffalo.edu Clinical Pharmacokinetics Laboratory UUCP: !sunybcs!cpl-mfh!martya State University of New York at Buffalo -----------------------------------------------------------------------------