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From: bskendig@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Brian Kendig)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware
Subject: How bad is a HD with 40ms access time? What are speeds these days?
Message-ID: <7071@idunno.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 12 Mar 91 01:08:12 GMT
Sender: news@idunno.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Starfleet Academy: Princeton University
Lines: 47

Right now I have an old Mac SE (two 800k drives) and a two-year-old
Tulin 50Mb hard drive with (I believe) an access time of 40ms.

I'm seriously thinking of moving up to a Macintosh LC with a 12"
monochrome display.

I have a list of prices that I can get on the LC through my
university.  It tells me that the LC with one high density floppy
drive and one 40Mb hard drive is $1585, while the LC with only one
high-density floppy drive and no hard drive is $1090.

If I sell my 50Mb hard drive, I estimate that I could only get at
_most_ $350 for it -- which means that it would be more cost-effective
for me to keep the drive I've got now and get the HD-less LC instead
of trading up to the 40Mb drive.

Now, there are two important questions I have right now:

(1) Will my drive really slow down my system all that much?  My Apple
campus rep thinks that the LC's hard drive has an access time of
something like 18-20 milliseconds, but the `official' brochures I have
from Apple say that an Apple internal 40Mb hard drive has an access
time of 30ms.  What's the real speed?  Is it relevant?  WIll having a
drive that's too slow only really mean that Microsoft Word will load
in twenty seconds rather than fifteen, or will it act to utterly bog
down my 16MHz 68020?  (Assume normal usage here -- for example, I'm
not going to be using virtual memory and thus doing any high-volume
disk access like that.)

(2) Is it or ain't it possible to get an LC with a second internal
high-density floppy drive?  If so, how much does the second internal
drive go for (university prices)?  If not, then why are there two
openings for disks on the front of the LC (one of which is plugged up
when you get an internal HD for it)?

Oh, and a small (3) here, too: Is it true that MaxAppleZoom doesn't
work on an LC?  Anyone know if a fix is planned, or is it technically
impossible to get something like that to work?

Thanks for any and all information!

     << Brian >>

| Brian S. Kendig      \ Macintosh |   Engineering,   | bskendig             |
| Computer Engineering |\ Thought  |  USS Enterprise  | @phoenix.Princeton.EDU
| Princeton University |_\ Police  | -= NCC-1701-D =- | @PUCC.BITNET         |
"It's not that I don't HAVE the work to *do* -- I don't DO the work I *have*."