Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!batcomputer!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!o.gp.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!gt0t+ From: gt0t+@andrew.cmu.edu (Gregory Ross Thompson) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2 Subject: Hard drives Message-ID: Date: 3 Nov 90 00:05:21 GMT Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 101 Hello everyone. I recently upgraded my system in a big way, so I decided to post about what I did, and how easy/hard it was. Here's what my system looked like before I made all of these updates: ROM 01 GS Color monitor 1 3.5" drive 1 5.25" drive 1 failing CMC 20 meg hard drive 1.25 megs of RAM MDIdeas SuperSonic Stereo card and digitizer I had been thinking about getting a new hard drive, and maybe some more RAM for a long time, but between not having the money for either, and having the feeling that I was getting by with what I had, I figured why should I bother getting 'em. My old hard drive changed all of this. From time to time (read daily), my old drive would power down by itself and give me a little error code via the power light. After calling the maker of the drive, I found out that the controller was sensing that the drive was spinning below spec speed, so it was turning itself off. This made up my mind. It was time to upgrade the system. Initially, I wanted to buy one of the SyQuest 44meg removable drives. I figured it was SCSI, and $640. Why not. Well, after doing a little research I found that I could get a Segate ST1096N 83.9 meg SCSI drive for $440. Yup, Twice the storage for $200 less. How can you argue with that? So I went with the Segate. Since my old drive wasn't SCSI (it's an MFM mechanism with two controllers between it and the GS), I needed to get a SCSI card as well. I'd heard great things about the RAMFast SCSI card, but at $200, I couldn't really afford it, and besides, my RAM card was non DMA. So, I figured that I might as well get Apple's DMA SCSI card. That way I wouldn't have to worry about compatibility problems. Apple will always provide me with a driver when new system updates come out. I didn't feel that I could count on CVTechnologies to do the same. You never know when a company's gonna go belly up. Look at Applied Ingenuity... The first thing I got in the mail was the SCSI card, and it looked like it was going to take a week or two to get the Segate in because it was out of stock. So I sat and looked at my nice new SCSI card for a while, and decided that if I was going to have this brand new, wicked fast hard drive, and a nice new DMA SCSI card to go along with it, I'd sure as hell better have DMA RAM, or I might was well have bought some piece of junk drive with 50ms access time. So one paycheck later, I had a HarrisLabs GSSauce card, and two 1 meg x 8 bit SIMMs in the mail. I now have everything hooked up and running. I had a few problems, though. I got the cable I needed from A2Central. They charged me $30 for the damn thing. True, it does do exactly what I need it to do, but $30? I highly suggest you look around elsewhere before getting one from them. The cable you need is a DB-25M to "50-Socket". In fact, A2Central just buys their cables from Redmond Cable. You might want to try getting it directly from them, or someone else that has lots of cables. I had no problems at all with the GSSauce card. If anyone out there is thinking of upgrading to one, go for it. The card was $85 from Programs Plus, and the SIMMs were $42 per meg from Peripheral Outlet. You can get 'em for $39 from Chip Merchant, but they only take C.O.D. No credit cards... The Segate itself is a beaut. I tell ya. It's access time is 28ms. Not bad at all, considering that my old drive was a 52 ms, and my 3.5" drive is 151 ms. Those are all random read times. For linear reads, the drive clocks in at about (hold on to your seat) 1.24ms. Yeah, you read that right. Amazing, eh? My old drive hit about 22.5ms on a good day, and my 3.5" drive does about 21ms. Segate did not include any documentation at all with the drive, so setting the SCSI priority was kinda fun. There were 5 sets of jumper pins on the drive, and they're all open when you get the drive (ie: no jumpers). And of course, there were no jumpers supplied with the drive. I've never seen jumpers sold in packs of less than 50 or 100, so if you get a Segate, you'll need to supply your own jumpers. After waiting on the phone for over an hour (no joke. They've got a killer phone maze) I finally talked to a technician, and he happily gave me the info I needed to set the priority. They ship 'em with a priority of zero. The SCSI card manual suggests that you make the drive six. That corresponds to: open open closed closed open On the jumper pins, in other words (over a thouand. That's the going rate for pictures these days, right?): 50 pin SCSI connector Jumper Pins ::::::::::::::::::::::::: : : | | : Where : represents open and | represesnts closed. I bet you already figured that out, eh? The one major drawback is that the drive is terminated with non-socketed resistors, so you've gotta clip 'em to remove 'em. Bummer, eh? Well, to sum it all up, I think I made some pretty good purchases. I now have a really nice system. The next thing I need is a Zip GSX, but that one's really far off. I'm kinda broke at the moment. I wonder why :-) If anyone has any questions about anything I've mentioned, feel free to send me mail. -Greg T. gt0t+@andrew.cmu.edu