chadbour@nms.gdc.portal.com (jeffrey chadbourne) (03/01/91)
Recently somebody posted a summary of building a clone system, and the general consences was to stay away from Miniscibe hard disks. I've been using a Miniscribe 3650 in my AT&T PC6300 for almost four years, and I've never had any problems. I was just curious as to the reasons why Miniscribe disks are to be avoided. Is there something wrong with their disks, or do they just not have a good high end model. -- Jeff Chadbourne | chadbourne@nms.gdc.portal.com General DataComm Inc. | -or- Middlebury, CT. | ...!portal!gdc!nms!chadbourne
hdrw@ibmpcug.co.uk (Howard Winter) (03/02/91)
I've been using a Miniscribe 3650 in my 10MHz AT clone for about three years, with no problems whatsoever. It's slow, that's its main problem. I will be upgrading to a faster unit (probably Conner, as they seem to be well thought of), but if speed is not that important, my experience is that it is reliable and sturdy. They were being advertised by 'Hi-Tech Asset Recovery' of Santa Barbara for about 190 dollars. Their phone number: (805) 966 5454. I have no connection with them - I'm just passing this on for interest. Good luck with building the machine. Howard. -- Automatic Disclaimer: The views expressed above are those of the author alone and may not represent the views of the IBM PC User Group. -- hdrw@ibmpcug.Co.UK Howard Winter 0W21' 51N43'
ntaib@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Nur Iskandar Taib) (03/03/91)
>I was just curious as to the reasons why Miniscribe disks are to be avoided. >Is there something wrong with their disks, or do they just not have a good >high end model. Well, I really wouldn't know except that I had a 5 1/4" RLL 30 Meg plated media w/ auto park (I forget the model #) in a Leading Edge Model D for about two years and had it suddenly fail. A low-level format failed to fix it. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Iskandar Taib | The only thing worse than Peach ala Internet: NTAIB@AQUA.UCS.INDIANA.EDU | Frog is Frog ala Peach Bitnet: NTAIB@IUBACS ! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
depolo@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Jeff DePolo) (03/05/91)
In article <196@esun49.nms.gdc.portal.com> chadbour@nms.gdc.portal.com (jeffrey chadbourne) writes: >Recently somebody posted a summary of building a clone system, and the >general consences was to stay away from Miniscibe hard disks. I've been >using a Miniscribe 3650 in my AT&T PC6300 for almost four years, and I've >never had any problems. > >I was just curious as to the reasons why Miniscribe disks are to be avoided. >Is there something wrong with their disks, or do they just not have a good >high end model. Well, my experiences with Miniscribe has been varied. Back in the late 80's during the "clone wars", we used dozens of Miniscribes without incident. However, my last experience was with their 380 meg SCSI drive (don't remember model, dammit). It was a nightmare. The first drive we had worked for about 3 months, then started getting random seek failures. A call to Miniscribe dictated we send it back (under warranty). They replaced it and shipped it back. It worked for about a week, then random data errors. After futzing with SpinRite, Norton Disk Doctor, etc., we called them again. This time I brought the drive up to Miniscribe myself (the place I was working is in Denver, Miniscribe about an hour north of Denver). Got a new one, which worked for a few weeks, and then data errors again. This went on for about a total of 6 drives. We finally have one that's been up for about a year without failure. Talking with the people at Miniscribe (this was right after a huge layoff, by the way), I was told that almost all of their operations are done in Singapore now. Very little work is done in the US, with the exception of the high capacity (high $) drives. Low-capacity drives sent to them under warranty get trashed and a new drive is sent. They hinted that the high-capacity drives get sent somewhere (I don't think Singapore) to get fixed. Since mine was under warranty, they just swapped it out. Your milage may vary. At one time, they were extremely good. Now, I wonder if I had an isolated experience with a bad batch of one single type of drive, or if it's indicative of their entire line. --- Jeff -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Jeff DePolo N3HBZ Twisted Pair: (215) 386-7199 depolo@eniac.seas.upenn.edu RF: 146.685- 442.70+ 144.455s (Philadelphia) University of Pennsylvania Carrier Pigeon: 420 S. 42nd St. Phila PA 19104
calloway@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Frank Calloway) (03/22/91)
I've owned two Miniscribe drives. The first was an older, full-height 40 MByte model that continues to work great (4+ years). The second was a newer, half-height 71 MByte (3085) model that gave me so many intermittent problems that I recently replaced it with a Toshiba IDE drive. Hard Drives International, which is where I bought both drives, says they dropped Miniscribe because of all the problems. And a survey in PC Magazine rated Miniscribe's reliability as questionable. I'd suggest you look elsewhere. Frank Calloway