Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!a360ad
From: a360ad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Gnurr)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: HD performance
Keywords: interleave, Seagate N drives
Message-ID: <1365@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 27 Mar 89 23:08:33 GMT
Organization: Univ of Washington, Seattle
Lines: 51

I am learning that Seagate is shipping their N series drives
with either roms 7 or roms 8.

Roms 7 can go 1:1
Roms 8 have to go 2:1

When you order a seagate drive from your dealer or from your favourite
mail order house.. you get what you get .... you have no choice
over which roms are in your mech..... at least this is what i am told.

Someone please correct me if i am wrong:     

"I can believe both the ICD ratehd.prg and the Supra blast.prg results."

(rhetorical)

A friend owns a Seagate ST277N with roms 7 (built in SCSI), ICD host.
He gets the following results from the two rate programs:

Interleave 2:1	321 K/s  34ms	483 pics/min => 8/sec
Interleave 1:1  552 K/s  34ms   721 pics/min => 12/sec

One needs not be a math genius to figure out the percent increase in
performance. 

However, my dealer refuses to believe that interleave makes a difference...
I ordered a 296N that was advertized to run 1:1 .... when i got to the
dealer's store tested my dealer-built box .. we learned from the packing
slip that i had roms 8.  The tech said he had formatted the drive 
1:1 anyway... with Supra Utils... and got a positive verification.
Well, a data transfer rate of 57 K/s is less than twice a floppy access..
It was at this time the tech figured that it had to be reformatted
2:1 and that INTERLEAVE was not really noticeable...
He did, however, point out that he called Supra and was told that they
had a roms 7 296N running on an ST and said that it was the fastest drive
they had seen yet...

My non-rhetorical question:  Am i being ridiculous to be requesting
a roms 7 mech from my dealer?   Is he right.... the ICD and Supra
rate programs are bunk?  I am consistently being told that my dealer
cannot guarantee what roms are in the mech.  I tell him consistently that
all he has to do is chech the packing slip...

Seagate is calling me back today to let me know what exactly they are
shipping... if indeed one may request a certain rom..... 

Has anyone else even cared about this type of thing...
Does anyone know of an "upgrade" to replace my rom 8 with a rom 7 ?

-kevin
a360ad@blake.acs.washington.edu