twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) (03/21/91)
In article <1991Mar21.011145.22608@unixg.ubc.ca> twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) writes: >I've been told that this Plus Hardcard II XL will do 9ms. Is this true? >But there was also something about it needing a DisCache. Does anyone >know what that's about? Does anyone have any info on this product? >Know where there's a review? have actually purchased such a beast? >Thank you. > I just called my local dealer that sells Hardcards and the price for this Hardcard II XL is no more expensive than a normal harddrive. And with an access time like 9ms, this seems like the way to go. Comments? Thomas.
callahan@mimsy.umd.edu (Jack Callahan) (03/22/91)
In article <1991Mar21.015651.23998@unixg.ubc.ca> twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) writes: >In article <1991Mar21.011145.22608@unixg.ubc.ca> twong@civil.ubc.ca (Thomas Wong) writes: >>I've been told that this Plus Hardcard II XL will do 9ms. Is this true? >>But there was also something about it needing a DisCache. Does anyone >>know what that's about? Does anyone have any info on this product? >>Know where there's a review? have actually purchased such a beast? >>Thank you. >> >I just called my local dealer that sells Hardcards and the price for >this Hardcard II XL is no more expensive than a normal harddrive. >And with an access time like 9ms, this seems like the way to go. I posted recently about my good experences with the Hardcard IIXL. The documents do claim that it has a 9ms access time, but I do not have any benchmarking results of my own. The card does have a 64K disk cache on board and it seems VERY fast in comparision to my other drive (an ST251 Snail, but heck, it's disk space!). It makes Windows 3.0 apps really fly considering I have only 2MB of RAM. -- jack
wbl@plague.Berkeley.EDU (Wen-Po Bobby Lee) (03/22/91)
>>>I've been told that this Plus Hardcard II XL will do 9ms. Is this true? >>>But there was also something about it needing a DisCache. Does anyone >>>know what that's about? Does anyone have any info on this product? >>>Know where there's a review? have actually purchased such a beast? >>> >>I just called my local dealer that sells Hardcards and the price for >>this Hardcard II XL is no more expensive than a normal harddrive. >>And with an access time like 9ms, this seems like the way to go. > >I posted recently about my good experences with the Hardcard IIXL. The >documents do claim that it has a 9ms access time, but I do not have >any benchmarking results of my own. The card does have a 64K disk cache >on board and it seems VERY fast in comparision to my other drive (an >ST251 Snail, but heck, it's disk space!). It makes Windows 3.0 apps >really fly considering I have only 2MB of RAM. IT'S TRUE! (Well, almost) The 50MB Plus Hardcard II XL was purchased by a dept. where I work and running CORE gave a reading of 14.2 ms for the access time. I can't remember what the data transfer rate was, but I think it went off the scale using CORE. It's really amazing: *Less than one inch thick (only takes up one slot, and adjacent slot aren't obstructed) *Easy to install *Reletively inexpensive (I saw a mail-order ad selling it for $400; a 105MB drive is also available, price-?) A few notes though: -If you want it to be the boot drive (C:), there may be a BIOS address conflict if you alredy have a drive C: A controller with changeble address may solve the problem. -Plus' customer service is a 1-900 number! (But they have a BBS) BTW, I don't work for Plus, I'm still a college student. In summary, it DOES "seem like the way to go." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the University nor any of its affiliates. -wbl@ocf.berkeley.edu
lam@hyper.hyper.com (Edmund C. Lam) (03/23/91)
The actual drive in the HardCard IIXL is either a Quantum 52AT or 105AT.
The smarts for the off-drive cache is in the board. These drives have their
own onboard cache (64K I belive).
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- Edmund C. Lam (lam@hyper.com) -
- HyperCube Inc. #7-419 Phillip Street -
- Waterloo,Ontario N2L 3X2 -jdb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian K. W. Hook) (03/23/91)
An article in _PC Sources_ just slammed the Hardcard for nigh near fraudulent advertising....first off: It is 9ms PERCEIVED ACCESS TIME....PERCEIVED being the operative word. I would like to inform you folks the my ST277R with NCACHE-F and 2MB of cache has a perceived access time of .4ms....that's right -- point 4. 00.4 ms The drive itself PHYSICALLY has an actual track to track average seek time of 17ms, which is nothing to sneeze at, but far from the 9ms. Benchmarks that were run on it vs. a 40MB Seagate IDE drive put it at about 5% faster on a the DOS Large Records benchmark, and it was not significantly faster than the Seagate in any other areas. I was impressed at the ads at first, but they are strictly ads and you have to take them with a grain of salt. While it is an impressive technological achievement otherwise, you can pick up a a good and fast 83MB IDE drive for around 380 dollars, then throw in 1MB of RAM for 50 bucks, and you have a drive that costs 430 dollars with a 1MB cache...cache that can be allocated to another program if it is required. Brian