Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!decwrl!shelby!portia!name From: name@portia.Stanford.EDU (tony cooper) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware Subject: SyQuest 45Mb removables are NOT the same Keywords: seek Message-ID: <9200@portia.Stanford.EDU> Date: 14 Feb 90 23:25:01 GMT Sender: tony cooper Organization: Stanford University Lines: 24 There seems to be a mistaken belief that all SyQuest mechanisms are the same and so which manufacturer you buy from makes no difference. This is not true. There are at least two mechanisms: i) The old one with 25ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures of 12000 hours. ii)The new one with 21ms nominal seek time and mean time between failures of 30000 hours. The new mechanism hasn't been available for long but many manufacturers are selling it. Many are selling the old one still. I believ that one way you can tell the new machanism is that the red light is now orange. But this may not be true and there may be more than two versions around anyway. A good way is to do an inquiry command and look at the ROM revision. A bad way is to measure the actual seek time. This is bad because the seek times agiven are nominal only, actual times may differ. Ask the manufacturer. If they don't know then don't buy. Buy only the new mechanism. It's better and it's cheaper. That's the way it happens in this business. Tony Cooper tony@popserver.stanford.edu