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From: ilan_-_rabinowitz@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Jasmine disk followup
Message-ID: <1371@cup.portal.com>
Date: Tue, 10-Nov-87 00:24:20 EST
Article-I.D.: cup.1371
Posted: Tue Nov 10 00:24:20 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 13-Nov-87 04:52:16 EST
References: <31052@sun.uucp>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 56
XPortal-User-Id: 1.1001.2614


Here's my account of dealing with the Jasmine 80 external drive which I
connected to my MAC ][ two months ago:

1. I drove up to S.F. and picked up the drive I had ordered a week before and
thereby got to meet some of the people involved in sales and tech support, but
that's another story.  Although at first I got nervous when I was told that
they were out of 6' cables for the drive (as I had originally ordered) they
found a new box with cables just shipped.. What a relief, after all that
anticipation.

2. I brought the drive home, plugged it in -- No problems.  It booted up fine
and I was able to make backups whatever s/w I thought would be usefull to me.

3. Then I started REALLY excercising the disk -- moving files, changing the
startup program, changing the scsi settings, etc.. I finally managed to foul
it up so it would not reboot.  After going through the manual, which an
experienced computer professional should not have a problem with, it was NO go.

I called tech support.  Christian, who I met earlier at S.F took the call
and attempted to be as helpful as possible.  NOTE: I found Jasmine's tech
support EXTREMELY willing to help out -- IMMEDIATELY !!!!  at the various
times I called up.
This time I was told to format the disk and try again from my backups.  I don't
work that way...  After 5 minutes of booting off floppies I finally managed
to get the MAC ][ to recognize that indeed there was a device on the SCSI
port.  After rebuilding the desktop everything went back to normal.  WHY ???
I still don't know.


HOWEVER:  since then I have intermittently had such a failure occur -- I am
starting to suspect the cable.  Luckily it seldom happens, therefore I haven't
bothered replacing the cable.

About a month later I receive my 80 MEG INTERNAL drive from apple and got
a chance to compare the two:


On some operations the internal drive is approximately 10% faster, but not much
more.

The MAIN difference I found is that attempting to format the Jasmine drive
with Version 1.4 of the formatter, which comes along with the MAC ][ causes
all hell to break loose with the Jasmine:  Certain files can not be copied
over to the Jasmine, once there they can not be retrieved and at times their
icons don't appear !!!
Using Version 1.1 of the formatter solves this problem -- Does anyone know
why?? Afterall I was under the impression that Apple and Jasmine used the
same manufacturer for the drives.

All in all I pretty satisfied with my Jasmine 80.


                                           - ILAN RABINOWITZ -


                                                         with  ILANET