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From: korn@anableps.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: Re: Syquest-based drives?
Message-ID: <19235@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 7 Nov 89 06:50:58 GMT
References: <10433@venera.isi.edu>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU
Reply-To: korn@anableps.berkeley.edu (Peter "Arrgh" Korn)
Distribution: comp
Organization: What, me organized???
Lines: 61

In <10433@venera.isi.edu>, jas@ISI.EDU (Jeff Sullivan) said:  
>
>What is the consensus of the price/perfromance ratio of the various
>45MB removable syquest drives on the market?  I noticed that Ehman
>just dropped their price to $799.  How is that?

I *just* unpacked and started playing with my $799 Ehman/Syquest 44 Meg
removable.  Here are my comments, in no particular order...

> Reasonably fast (2.8 to 4.6 MBaud/sec. transfer rates using SCSI Evaluator).

> Fairly quiet (ie: not as loud as my Mac II which has a custom fan that 
  makes is about as quiet as a Mac SE).  It has a higher pitch whine than
  the MacII; I can definitely tell when it is on and a disk is inserted
  and spinning.  Most of the noise comes from the drive mechanism (the
  tiny fan is inaudible over the noise of the MacII), so I doubt that
  the Ehman will be any noisier than any other Syquest drive.

> Shoddy documentation (they provide two programs that can format the disks,
  and don't make it clear which to use [two separate manuals, one for each
  program; one of which spends most of it's time explaining the Finder!]).

> Poor support - it's a good thing I have a speaker phone as I've been put
  on hold for almost 5 minutes, only to have someone come on and ask who I'm
  holding for & if I've been helped prior to another 3 minute wait.

> I'm not thrilled with their DB-25 SCSI connectors, but the cable they provide
  is short enough, well-insulated enough, that it should do.

> The disks (as shipped from Ehman; perhaps they come this way from Syquest?)
  are pre-formatted with an interleave of 2.  Needless to say, I had to
  reformat it to an interleave of 1 for my MacII.  Their documentation tells
  you to avoid formatting at all costs, and that you shouldn't need to 
  format the disks b/c they come pre-formatted.  SCSI Evaluator results on
  a MacII with the interleave set to 2 as shipped range from 1.9 MBaud/sec.
  to 3.2 MBaud/sec. [roughly; these are from memory]).

> With companies they try to get terms (at least the West Coast salesperson),
  and this wound up delaying the rush order by over a week when we told them
  we were happy with COD.

> After running for 8 hours straight in a 'room temperature' office (~65 
  degrees or so), the metal casing of the drive was cool, if not downright
  cold.  The disk itself (or rather the plastic casing) was not as cool
  as the metal casing, but not yet warm to the touch.  After a few days
  of continuous running I'll have better data.


Summary preliminary conclusions (and other obfuscatory oxymorons):

The hardware looks good thus far; the docs. are very poor, as is the company
thus far.  For a savings of $200 that's maybe worth it.  The *real* question
of hardware reliability will take longer to answer.  Anyone else out there
with data on Ehman Syquest drive reliability?


Peter Korn
--
Peter "Arrgh" Korn
korn@mica.Berkeley.EDU
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