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From: andrew@alice.UUCP (Andrew Hume)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs
Subject: Re: Need info about CDC Wren hard disks
Summary: a summary of interesting imprimis offerings
Message-ID: <10145@alice.UUCP>
Date: 16 Nov 89 07:46:10 GMT
References: <442@cs.columbia.edu>
Distribution: usa
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ
Lines: 49



this is a brief summary of the latest offerings from imprimis.
as always, i take care but no responsibility for details; call
your imprimis rep. IN PARTICULAR, the prices are for me as an at&t
person; we get huge volume discounts, you should probably add 50-75%
to get a more available price.
the data comes from data sheets and salespeople. caveat empor.


wren vii:
	the latest in a long line of disks. 5.25" 1.2GB SCSI disk.
	average seek 16.5ms, 40KH MTBF. sustained 1.7MB/s.
	available now as evaluation units at $3294, probable eventual cost
	of ~$2500 ($2/MB).

elite:
	new range of 5.25" disks (eventually replacing the wren's).
	comes in SMD, IPI-2 and SCSI-2 interfaces. capacity is
	1.2GB (1.5GB scsi). latency is <6ms, average seek 12ms.
	sustained transfer of 3MB/s. 100KH MTBF.
	smd evaluation units in jan, scsi production in apr/may
	($4.5-5K).

sabre 2hp:
	new version of the regular 8" sabre; 1.2GB and 50KH MTBF.
	IPI-2 interface, sustained 6MB/s (twice regular sabres).
	latency 8.3ms, ave seek 15ms.
	these are shipping now, $7.4K.

sabre 2500:
	2.5GB, evaluation jan/feb, seek 13ms, MTBF 100KH,
	3MB/s, $8K.

arraymaster 9058:
	(base for imprimis's raid).
	this controller ($15K, at beta sites now) connects to drives
	(any kind, speed) via IPI-2 and connects to a host via IPI-3.
	assuming fast drives like sabre 2hp, host data rates are
	25MB/s peak, 22MB/s sustained. imprimis will be selling a couple
	of packages based on this controller; a small pseduo-disk of
	5GB, 20MB/s sustained transfer, and a larger disk 16GB, with
	two 18MB/s sustained i/o ports. both these packages have a lot
	of internal error correction, a mean time to data loss of ~114yrs.

P.S. i note in passing that the WREN V and WREN VI were plagued with early firmware
problems regarding bus timeouts on long I/O transfers. these have been fixed
(my drives were fixed under warranty) and new drives should be okay.
but be wary of older drives.