jonah@crl.ucsd.edu (Jonah Stich) (12/17/90)
Hiya gang! Anyone out there have info on removable (aka cartidge) drives? I'm looking at a Hard Drives International add here that has a Syquest 44 Meg drive for $519. Anyone know how well these things work with the GS? They're SCSI devices, so they shouldn't have any problems interfacing. Things I'm worried about are a) what the system does when the cartridge is removed (ie. does the Finder grey the icon like it does a 3.5" disk or does it still try to access the sucker and get unhappy when it can't) and b) does it matter that there's no driver for these drives (ie. will the normal 5.0.x SCSI drivers work)? Any help you can provide would be MOST appreciated. I'd like to ask Santa for one of these for Christmas... :) Thanks in advance! Jonah
unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) (12/17/90)
In article <14981@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> jonah@crl.ucsd.edu (Jonah Stich) writes: >Hiya gang! Anyone out there have info on removable (aka cartidge) drives? I'm >looking at a Hard Drives International add here that has a Syquest 44 Meg >drive for $519. Anyone know how well these things work with the GS? They're >SCSI devices, so they shouldn't have any problems interfacing. Things I'm >worried about are a) what the system does when the cartridge is removed (ie. >does the Finder grey the icon like it does a 3.5" disk or does it still try >to access the sucker and get unhappy when it can't) and b) does it matter that >there's no driver for these drives (ie. will the normal 5.0.x SCSI drivers >work)? Any help you can provide would be MOST appreciated. I'd like to ask >Santa for one of these for Christmas... :) Thanks in advance! I borrowed one of these for a weekend a few months back.. It worked virtually perfectly... The few "quirks" (or "features" heh) that it had were: 1) You could eject the drive in the Finder (or any other program for that matter) and it would realize it had been ejected and grey everything out properly.. and would know when a new one was put in, etc... BUT the original icon would never go away.. That is, you can't drag it into the trash or anything. this is VERY minor unless you somehow plan on having 20 partitions on the screen at the same time! heh... 2) It seemed that some programs would make GS/OS go weird when exiting from a PRodOS 8 program back to the finder, BUT I THINK THIS IS THE PRODOS 8 program, and not the hard drive in any way since similar problems happened when I borrowed a regular hard drive for a month... Not exactly the same problems, but it seems like they were just minor quirks that could be fixed by rebooting.. (And I stress that it didn't happen all of the time with either hard drive) I am convinced they work so well, that unless I get a regular hard drive as a present (which I doubt as I know already pretty sure that I'm getting ORCA/C for Xmas.. That's since my mom knows nothing about GS software and doesn't know where to get it and doesn't know where to get it cheapest, etc...), I'm gonna get a cartridge drive... My goal is to have one cartridge for main use, and one as a backup cartridge... So that I'll have to deal with floppies only when necessary... This really won't be as big of a deal as some people think if I use backup software and back up incrementally.. So I give a BIG YES vote for cartridge drives! If anyone else knows a cheaper place than Hard Drives International for these please tell us.. If anyone knows a cheap place for floptical drives, please tell us about that too... These are 20 megabyte 3.5" drives... I think they're more convenient as they only cost $10 for a disk (20 megs) rather than about $60-$70 for a 45 meg cartridge. -- /Apple II(GS) Forever! unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu MAIL ME FOR INFO ABOUT CHEAP CDs\ |WRITE TO ORIGIN ABOUT ULTIMA VI //e and IIGS! Mail me for addresses, & info. | \ "Dammit Bev, is it you inside or is it the clown?" -IT by Stephen King /
shankar@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Subash Shankar) (12/18/90)
In article <10167@darkstar.ucsc.edu> unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) writes: > My goal is to have one cartridge for main use, and one as a >backup cartridge... If I read this correctly, and you intend to back up one cartridge to another (as opposed to backing up a regular drive to cartridge) this isn't particularly enjoyable. My cartridge drive takes about 20-30 seconds each for spinning down and up. So, you can count on at least 1 minute for each cartridge swap. Floppies are a lot faster even with the slower access. --- Subash Shankar Honeywell Systems & Research Center MN65-2100 voice: (612) 782 7558 US Snail: 3660 Technology Dr., Minneapolis, MN 55418 shankar@src.honeywell.com srcsip!shankar
lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com (Laer Haider) (12/19/90)
In-Reply-To: message from shankar@SRC.Honeywell.COM >>I'll figure something out... >> My goal is to have one cartridge for main use, and one as a >>backup cartridge... > >If I read this correctly, and you intend to back up one cartridge to >another (as opposed to backing up a regular drive to cartridge) this >isn't particularly enjoyable. My cartridge drive takes about 20-30 >seconds each for spinning down and up. So, you can count on at least >1 minute for each cartridge swap. Floppies are a lot faster even with >the slower access. The ideal setup would be to have 2 44MB cartridge drives in one box. Duel drives. This way you have 88 MB on line with the option of doing a disk to disk backup to other cartridges. I got my 105MB Toshiba and will be happy with that until the 20MB floptical drives come out. That will make my backups and misc. data storage a helluva lot nicer. Anyone got any info on the progress in marketing these little wonders? / \ / / ______________________________________________________ \\\' , / // ProLine: pro-beagle!lhaider \\\//, _/ //, INET: lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com \_-//' / //<, /\\ UUCP: crash!pro-beagle!lhaider \ /// <//` //\\\ ARPA: crash!pro-beagle!lhaider@nosc.mil / >> \\\`__/_ ///\\\\ /,)-^>> _\` \\\ ////\\\\\ The opinions expressed here belong to (/ \\ /\\\ // IIgs \\\ no entity(s), living or dead! // _//\\\\ ------------------------------------------------------ ((` ((
unknown@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (The Unknown User) (12/21/90)
In article <26988.chatter.infoapple@pro-beagle> lhaider@pro-beagle.cts.com (Laer Haider) writes: >>> My goal is to have one cartridge for main use, and one as a >>>backup cartridge... >>If I read this correctly, and you intend to back up one cartridge to >>another (as opposed to backing up a regular drive to cartridge) this >>isn't particularly enjoyable. My cartridge drive takes about 20-30 >>seconds each for spinning down and up. So, you can count on at least >>1 minute for each cartridge swap. Floppies are a lot faster even with >>the slower access. I didn't reply to this earlier. Yes, this is my intention. Lets use your 1 minute time for each swap, even though when I used a cartridge drive, it was about 1/2 to 3/4 of a minute, not a minute... So I have 1.75 megs right now.. (hope to get more in the future).. So that's at least a meg of memory to be used for copying.. So if we presume that the cartridge is COMPLETELY full (rare), and that it takes .5 minute to read and write out the meg that it's currently copying... so that's 40 (round it down a little for easy computation) * 1 + 40 * .5... which is 60 minutes... An hour... And that's only the FIRST time. Incremental backups will take MUCH less time. It's worth an hour of cartridge swapping versus 45 minutes (whatever, just a made up #) of floppy swapping... Dealing with floppies in the long run is much worse than dealing with cartridges in the long run. >The ideal setup would be to have 2 44MB cartridge drives in one box. >Duel drives. This way you have 88 MB on line with the option of doing >a disk to disk backup to other cartridges. I got my 105MB Toshiba and >will be happy with that until the 20MB floptical drives come out. That >will make my backups and misc. data storage a helluva lot nicer. >Anyone got any info on the progress in marketing these little wonders? The flopticals are OUT from what I've heard. The two companies making similar drives are Brier Peripherals and Insite Technology, both based in San Jose. One of them was released already, and the other is soon to be out.. (so they ARE out as I said).. This intrigue me too.. But I've heard they are gonna be about $800 new, versus $500 for cartridge drives.. -- /Apple II(GS) Forever! unknown@ucscb.ucsc.edu MAIL ME FOR INFO ABOUT CHEAP CDs\ |WRITE TO ORIGIN ABOUT ULTIMA VI //e and IIGS! Mail me for addresses, & info. | \ "Dammit Bev, is it you inside or is it the clown?" -IT by Stephen King /
kimbrennan@gnh-starport.cts.com (Kim Brennan) (12/21/90)
Hmmm, Jonah, I've got a Syquest drive on my GS. But, I'm also using a OKS
Multikache as my SCSI interface. Under 5.03 the Finder does NOT Gray out the
cartridge when it is removed. Talking with Matt G. he says that the DMA SCSI
does support removing the cartridge on the fly.
I'm unconvinced. I've heard of at least on person (using the DMA SCSI) who is
consistantly losing data and getting his cartridges munged when changing them.
I do NOT reccommend changing cartridges with the computer on. I suggest a shut
down of the GS and a fresh reboot. (especially if you are using the OKS board,
but possibly even with the Ramfast or DMA SCSI.)
INET: /\_/\ kimbrennan@gnh-starport.cts.com
/ o o \ America Online: KimBrennan
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