Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!pepper!cmcmanis
From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A2000 hard disks
Message-ID: <37327@sun.uucp>
Date: 23 Dec 87 22:53:15 GMT
References: <2515@killer.UUCP>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 35

I don't mean to pick on Jim but this stuff always amuses me ...

In article <2515@killer.UUCP> jdp@killer.UUCP (Jim Pritchett) writes:
>4.  Has anyone found a reasonably priced 3.5" drive bigger than 40 Meg?  Please
>    provide info

Something that Jim and others don't understand apparently is that the hard disk
market is easily as competitive cost wise as the PC clone market. Distributors
complain they can't make any money selling drive units because the price 
pressure is so great. Now Jim wants a "reasonably" priced 3.5" drive > 40Meg.
I guess reasonable would be the same price as a 20Meg drive? We are talking
some serious high tech gear in these drives, not to mention that the tolerances
are amazing as well. Call up your distributor and see if they have the 
Connors Peripherals 100Mb half height 3.5" drive. I believe is sells for 
$2000 and this is a *bargain*. Full height 5.25" 120Meg drives from Maxtor (not 
even SCSI) go for $1300. Three years ago the CP drive was not even *possible*.
So I am amused when someone says, "But I want a 'reasonably' priced drive."
No offense intended, welcome to the real world.

>5.  Will the A2090 support tape drives?  (SCSI or ST-506?)

Yes, any SCSI Tape drive will work, Archive and Wangtek both make one. But
there is zero software support so why bother at this time? One thing you 
might do is whack Gilmore's PDTar to talk directly to the drive (it's a 
hack and unsupportable I know) but then you could dump and read files that
the Sun at the office could read and write too.

>7.  When can I get the Fast File System?

From Commodore when they release it. Not Yet Available.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.