Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site dalcs.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsri!dalcs!forceten From: forceten@dalcs.UUCP (ForceTen Enterprises) Newsgroups: net.micro.pc Subject: Tape backups for PC/AT running Xenix. Summary. Message-ID: <1553@dalcs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 2-Aug-85 15:55:29 EDT Article-I.D.: dalcs.1553 Posted: Fri Aug 2 15:55:29 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Aug-85 23:30:48 EDT Organization: Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada Lines: 103 *** BACKUP THIS MESSAGE WITH YOUR TAPE DRIVE *** ][b Earlier I posted a request for information about suppliers of tape drives for the IBM PC/AT running Xenix and promised a summary. Although the response was not overwhelming, I have located several sources, and the summary follows. Thanks go to Jerry Deroo, Tom Poindexter, and Patrick d'Entremont. ------------ Emerald Systems Corporation 4757 Morena Boulevard San Diego, CA 92117 USA (619) 270-1994 contact: Douglas Cooper or Stephen Mahar Emerald has a distributor in Canada, but I haven't got hold of them yet. They sell hard disks and tape drives for the AT running either DOS or Xenix. Hard disks from 36 to 140Meg (unformatted), and tape drives in both 1/4 inch cartridge and 1/2 inch reel to reel format, are available. They do seem a bit pricy: $2050 for an internal drive, $375 for a cabinet (I don't know if this includes a power supply), $250 for the Xenix instalation kit. Other prices include $275 for 5 tape cartridges, and $250 for the "AT Upgrade Conversion kit", which means I don't know what; but presumably includes an 18 MHz crystal, as these come with the disk drives. However, they claim to be shipping right now! The work on the AT driver is newly completed, so who knows how fast it is. ------------ ComputoneSystems Inc. One Dunwoody Park Atlanta GA 30338 USA (800) 241-3946 (404) 393-3010 for Canadians contact: Dave Middleton (on vacation until August 12th) or Jack Berlin Computone does not yet have a Canadian distributor, but they are looking for one. They have been shipping an 8 serial port board for use with PC/AT Xenix for around 5 months, and one respondent indicated that he was very satisfied with its quality. However, they are still working on the device driver for the 1/4 inch cartridge 60 Meg Archive drive. Their prices seem likely to a bit less than Emerald's, about $2000 for the drive and software. They got the thing working today, but it will be two weeks before they go to Beta test. For the record, the 8 port board has a quantity one price of $1295. ------------ Consensys Inc. somewhere in Toronto, Canada. (416) 440-0096 contact: my first one, and I can't read my own writing. Very polite, he was, and seemed quite knowledgeable Consensys Inc. is a Value Added Reseller of PC/AT systems, just getting established. It was formed by some people who became disenchanted with life at HCR (Human Computing Resources, a big company). They have a package consisting of an 80 Meg. CDC disk drive, 60 Meg 1/4 inch tape cartridge, error correcting memory (how much I am uncertain), and an 8 channel serial board. They were just sending material to the printers for glossies when I called (a week ago), and the package price was to be around $7500. Sorry for the sketchiness of this report, but this is more my fault than theirs, as I was the one asking questions. They haven't decided whether or not to sell the tape system separately or not. [The price figure is in US dollars] ------------ Irwin Magnetics (313) 996-3300 They are not expecting anything for a couple or so months, but are working on what would seem to be the cheapest alternative: the 1/8 inch tape unit used in the Compaq Deskpro, running off the floppy controller. I didn't work much on this one because the capacity didn't seem likely to match our needs. ------------ That about covers it. If anyone else knows of any more potential suppliers, please let me know: if I get more , I'll post more. ||!][b -- ------------------------ Neil S Erskine decvax!dartvax!dalcs!force10!erskine ForceTen Enterprises Inc. 3845 Dutch Village Rd. Halifax, N.S. (902) 453-0040