🚀 go-pugleaf

In <43fr7k$2sk_002@nntp.best.com> sandy@sandy.com (Sandy A. Meltzer)
writes: 
>
>Hello all,
>
>I'm considering adding a 1Gb+ Optical drive (MO?) to my
>Win95/NT3.51 Pentium-based workstation and would appreciate
>some feedback about optical drives and manufacturers.
>
>For example, how do the various optical products compare
>between Maxoptix vs Pinnacle vs NEC vs Fujitsu, etc.?
>Should I compare access times, rotational speed, or what?
>Does one manufacturer make a better quality drive compared
>to another or are they basically similar?
>
>I see a wide range of prices and was wondering if an optical
>drive like the 1.3Gb NEC at $999 is as functional as a Maxoptix
>(Tahiti-3 or 4)at $1700?  Does one company provide better software
>or support?
>
>
>Any feedback or buying suggestions would be most appreciated.
>
Sandy,
   I was one of the designers of the Maxoptix Tahiti 2 and Tahiti 3
drives.  I am no longer an employee of Maxoptix, and have no bias, so
here's the straight story:  The Tahiti 3 and the drive from HP were the
fastest drives on the market last time I checked.  People WILL give you
all kinds of misleading specs to prove that their drive is faster. 
Pinnacle is one of the WORST of the bunch, quoting seek times over a
small band of the disk's surface, instead of 1/3 stroke seek.  (There
is a big difference between 1/3 stroke seek, and seek over 1/3 of a
50MB area, or some other misleading spec.)  Their drive is really
fairly slow, and their marketing is very misleading.  They do have an
advanced cacheing controller that makes up for the slow mechanism for
some situations.  The Japanese drives are for the most part solid if
not fast performers. The Tahiti 4 is a half hight drive which is made
by one of the Japanese manufacturers and resold by Maxoptix. The amount
of noninformation, disinformation, lies and misunderstanding about
optical recording is amazing.  Any of the systems will perform OK as a
backup device, but my Tahiti 3 with 4MB cache outperformed my IDE hard
drives on reads and did pretty well on writes.  (Magneto-optical
recording requires an erase pass before a write, so write throughput is
degraded.  This is where the cache helps a lot.)  Any questions please
post or Email me-
                                                 Good Luck,
                                                        John

sandy@sandy.com (Sandy A. Meltzer) writes:

>I'm considering adding a 1Gb+ Optical drive (MO?) to my
>Win95/NT3.51 Pentium-based workstation and would appreciate
>some feedback about optical drives and manufacturers.

If you can wait a few months, do it.  MO technology is getting
much more common, and prices are beginning to drop quickly.  There
are many ~1GB MO drives around the $1-2k range right now, but Iomega
is introducing their own 1GB MO for ~$500 in the next few months,
I believe.  If the 1GB capacity is not a firm requirement, the 600MB
3.5" IEEE MO standardized drives should be hitting the market as
early as next month (Sony will have one out, probably others from
Fuji and IBM).  I have no idea about the street price, but I'd guess
at approximately ~500.  I would stay away from smaller 3.5" MO drives
at this point (unless you want a bargain).

Another thing you need to consider is the airflow direction in your
chassis, if you are planning to install an internal model.  I would
highly recommend a model that has dual loading doors to keep
out any dust.  Most power supplies suck in air from the front into
the chassis and out the back.  If your MO drive isn't of a dust-free
design, you will get a thin layer of dust on the lens which may
be hard to clean (even with a lens cleaner) without taking the
drive apart.

I've heard some rumours of the Fuji drives frequently failing in the
first 1-2 years, but I really don't know that much about it.  You
should consider the MTBF (with a grain of salt) as well as
the manufacturer's warranty (very seriously) before deciding on a
model.  I have a Fuji OEM'ed IBM MO drive, and aside from its
lack of dust-free design, I'm very pleased with it.  One tip in
increasing MO drive performance is to use a large cache (smartdrv
will do).

Hope that helps.
Dave.
--
Dave Ahn,  ahn@indigo2.medeng.wfu.edu   "When you were born you cried, and the
                                         world rejoiced.  Try to live your life
Medical Visualization Lab, Radiology,    so that when you die you will rejoice,
Bowman Gray School of Medicine           and the world will cry."  -1/2 jj^2

John

> Pinnacle is one of the WORST of the bunch, quoting seek times over a
> small band of the disk's surface, instead of 1/3 stroke seek.  (There
> is a big difference between 1/3 stroke seek, and seek over 1/3 of a
> 50MB area, or some other misleading spec.)  Their drive is really
> fairly slow, and their marketing is very misleading. 

PMFJI, but I was wondering if you know anything about Pinnacle's new Apex
drive?  Does what you said above apply to *it* as well?

I've been thinking of getting one (well, either it, or Iomega's Jaz, 
whenever it's out).  I wouldn't have considered MO, but the specs on
the Apex appear to be "close" to a HD.  However, if I can't trust the
bloody specs ....

Ken

PS - You're right.  I just looked at Apex' spec, and see that the seek time
given is 1/3 stroke (19ms).  I - being the naive consumer that I am - just
assumed that that must be how all specs are given.  So how does this compare
to Jaz' seek time of ~11ms?  (Do I have to multiply x3?  Then my decision is
done; forget Apex!)

Ken Brown <ken@pine-creek-sw.com> wrote:

> PS - You're right.  I just looked at Apex' spec, and see that the seek time
> given is 1/3 stroke (19ms).  I - being the naive consumer that I am - just
> assumed that that must be how all specs are given.  So how does this compare
> to Jaz' seek time of ~11ms?  (Do I have to multiply x3?  Then my decision is
> done; forget Apex!)
> 

Yeah, and Ken Brown should've been paying more attention.  Sorry 'bout that.

Apparently, Pinnacle Micro has realized the error of their ways (as I have!),
and now quote seek time for 1/3 stroke.  Don't know what this means, but
I'm assuming (again!) that this, then, is the standard measure, and I can
compare this number (FWIW) to ~11ms for Jaz, and ~8ms for my HD.

Ken

In <43irnh$7il@news.iag.net> joutlan@iag.net (John Outlan) says

> Sandy,
> 
> I am not an expert in the area of MO drives, but definitely check out
> Iomega's Jaz Drive ... $499 with either 540 or 1 GIG removable
> cartridges.  I think the 1gig cartridge is $99?   I think the days of
> expensive MO drives are coming to an end.  Check it out at web site :
> http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~jwu/iomega.html

I think that you are missing the point of what MO is all about.  It is not
really important because of the density and removability, but because of
the expected data life in excess of 30 years.  This is the thing that no
purely magnetic recording method can match because of self-erasure.  If
you need reliable archival storage of data, then MO and WORM are the only
viable methods presently available.  And there does not seem to be
anything else on the horizon.

Harvey

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Harvey Fishman   |   It is easy to live by the laws that you agree with.
fishman@panix.com |          But being law-abiding means obeying
  718-258-7276    |        even the ones that you think are wrong.


                                                                                                                           

sandy@sandy.com (Sandy A. Meltzer) wrote:

>Hello all,

>I'm considering adding a 1Gb+ Optical drive (MO?) to my
>Win95/NT3.51 Pentium-based workstation and would appreciate
>some feedback about optical drives and manufacturers.

>For example, how do the various optical products compare
>between Maxoptix vs Pinnacle vs NEC vs Fujitsu, etc.?
>Should I compare access times, rotational speed, or what?
>Does one manufacturer make a better quality drive compared
>to another or are they basically similar?

>I see a wide range of prices and was wondering if an optical
>drive like the 1.3Gb NEC at $999 is as functional as a Maxoptix
>(Tahiti-3 or 4)at $1700?  Does one company provide better software
>or support?


>Any feedback or buying suggestions would be most appreciated.


Sandy,

I am not an expert in the area of MO drives, but definitely check out
Iomega's Jaz Drive ... $499 with either 540 or 1 GIG removable
cartridges.  I think the 1gig cartridge is $99?   I think the days of
expensive MO drives are coming to an end.  Check it out at web site :
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~jwu/iomega.html

Good luck,

                            
--------------------------------------------------------------

John Outlan
joutlan@iag.net
--------------------------------------------------------------

In <43icop$1qf@maureen.teleport.com> Ken Brown <ken@pine-creek-sw.com>
writes: 
>
>Ken Brown <ken@pine-creek-sw.com> wrote:
>
>> PS - You're right.  I just looked at Apex' spec, and see that the
seek time
>> given is 1/3 stroke (19ms).  I - being the naive consumer that I am
- just
>> assumed that that must be how all specs are given.  So how does this
compare
>> to Jaz' seek time of ~11ms?  (Do I have to multiply x3?  Then my
decision is
>> done; forget Apex!)
>> 
>
>Yeah, and Ken Brown should've been paying more attention.  Sorry 'bout
that.
>
>Apparently, Pinnacle Micro has realized the error of their ways (as I
have!),
>and now quote seek time for 1/3 stroke.  Don't know what this means,
but
>I'm assuming (again!) that this, then, is the standard measure, and I
can
>compare this number (FWIW) to ~11ms for Jaz, and ~8ms for my HD.
>
>Ken

Ken,
   Don't assume this can be compared to anything else.  That is the
problem in this industry.  (Sorry if I sound negative, but this is just
past experience)  There is a difference for example, between an average
1/3 stroke seek and a seek over 1/3 of total stroke.  I have been out
of the loop for awhile, so some of the new drives out may have better
performance, i.e. they may have faster transfer rates than the drives I
was involved with,  but I have a hard time believing that the seek
times are the same or faster, since I know what it takes to get a 5.25"
optical to seek in 19mS. If you want the straight story, HP (if they
are still in the optical business) and Maxoptix do not mislead about
performance specs.  If you call one of these companies and ask for real
benchmark data, they will give you a straight story.  Probably most of
the other manufacturers will too. 
                                       Good luck.
                                                  John

In article <43ivef$jb4@panix.com>,
	fishman@panix.com (Harvey Fishman) writes:
> 
> I think that you are missing the point of what MO is all about.  It is not
> really important because of the density and removability, but because of
> the expected data life in excess of 30 years.  This is the thing that no
> purely magnetic recording method can match because of self-erasure.  If
> you need reliable archival storage of data, then MO and WORM are the only
> viable methods presently available.  And there does not seem to be
> anything else on the horizon.
> 

Interesting point, but even ignoring the problems of traditional magnetic
recordings, hands-up those who still have the mechanisms to read 30-year
old discs today.

The nearest analogy I can think of is the 8 inch hard sectored floppy disc
(although I'm not sure even this goes back that far). So now you have to
find a mechanism (working), cables, controller (that fits a current bus,
- SCSI?), driver software, etc.

In 30 years time, your MO will be like the hard sectored 8 inch floppy
(only your 30 year old MO mechanism is a lot less likely to still be
working than a 30 year old floppy disc drive :-) ).

I could just about imagine CD-ROMs being readable in 30 years time,
because they have gained such a large market penetration to date, both
inside and outside the computer industry (after all, it's easier to
play LP records now than read 8 inch flopppies). I don't see any of the
other technologies being usable in even ten years. There are too many
of them, market penetration for each (or even all in total) is miniscule
compared with that of the CD-ROM, and technology quickly makes them
obsolete. The CD-ROM (now 15 years old?) seems to have survived its
technology being obsolete, due to its very large market penetration.

Some food for thought...
-- 
Andrew Gabriel                        Home: Andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk
Consultant Software Engineer          Work: Andrew.Gabriel@net-tel.co.uk

In <43m11a$hv@cucumber.demon.co.uk> sadg@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) says

> In article <43ivef$jb4@panix.com>,
> 	fishman@panix.com (Harvey Fishman) writes:
> > 
> > I think that you are missing the point of what MO is all about.  It is not
> > really important because of the density and removability, but because of
> > the expected data life in excess of 30 years.  This is the thing that no
> > purely magnetic recording method can match because of self-erasure.  If
> > you need reliable archival storage of data, then MO and WORM are the only
> > viable methods presently available.  And there does not seem to be
> > anything else on the horizon.
> > 
> 
> Interesting point, but even ignoring the problems of traditional magnetic
> recordings, hands-up those who still have the mechanisms to read 30-year
> old discs today.
> 
> The nearest analogy I can think of is the 8 inch hard sectored floppy disc
> (although I'm not sure even this goes back that far). So now you have to
> find a mechanism (working), cables, controller (that fits a current bus,
> - SCSI?), driver software, etc.
> 
> In 30 years time, your MO will be like the hard sectored 8 inch floppy
> (only your 30 year old MO mechanism is a lot less likely to still be
> working than a 30 year old floppy disc drive :-) ).
> 
> I could just about imagine CD-ROMs being readable in 30 years time,
> because they have gained such a large market penetration to date, both
> inside and outside the computer industry (after all, it's easier to
> play LP records now than read 8 inch flopppies). I don't see any of the
> other technologies being usable in even ten years. There are too many
> of them, market penetration for each (or even all in total) is miniscule
> compared with that of the CD-ROM, and technology quickly makes them
> obsolete. The CD-ROM (now 15 years old?) seems to have survived its
> technology being obsolete, due to its very large market penetration.
> 
> Some food for thought...

I have no real dispute with what you say but will point out that MOST
people who are talking of storing data for 30 years are not really
interested in whether it is real or not.  They are doing it because of a
contractual or other legal requirement for demonstration that they have
made provision for this.  Using an MO drive is usually acceptable as
meeting such a proviso.  That is why I have my MO drive.

Harvey

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Harvey Fishman   |   It is easy to live by the laws that you agree with.
fishman@panix.com |          But being law-abiding means obeying
  718-258-7276    |        even the ones that you think are wrong.


                                                                           

In article <43hd9p$sve@eis.wfunet.wfu.edu>,
ahn@indigo2.medeng.wfu.edu (Dave Ahn) says:

>I have a Fuji OEM'ed IBM MO drive ....

Which IBM drive is it?

I have an 0632 ACA 1.3GB RW unit, and I like it, but writes sure seem slow ....

	-Kenny

-- 
Kenneth R. Crudup, Unix & OS/2 Software Consultant, Scott County Consulting
kenny@panix.com		CI$: 75032,3044	  +1 617 524 5929/4949 Home/Office
16 Plainfield St, Boston, MA 02130-3633	  +1 617 983 9410      Fax
OS/2 box: pkenny.tiac.net (when I'm online) Get Warp-ed! OS/2 3.0 is here NOW!

kenny@panix.com (Kenneth Crudup) wrote:
>In article <43hd9p$sve@eis.wfunet.wfu.edu>,
>ahn@indigo2.medeng.wfu.edu (Dave Ahn) says:
>
>>I have a Fuji OEM'ed IBM MO drive ....
>
>Which IBM drive is it?
>
>I have an 0632 ACA 1.3GB RW unit, and I like it, but writes sure seem slow ....

Is this a full height or half height drive.  IBM was selling a full height drive 
that was slower than molasses (part of the reason being that by default the drive 
always did verifies when writing).  The newer half height drive is much faster.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Dillard					david@microdes.com
Principal Software Engineer
Micro Design International, Inc.		http://www.microdes.com

>>I have an 0632 ACA 1.3GB RW unit, and I like it, but writes sure seem slow. 

In article <446cmc$3ks@jeefers.microdes.com>,
David Dillard <david@microdes.com> says:

>Is this a full height or half height drive?

Full height. PN "91G9240" sounds right, for some reason. It's a "-CBx" drive
suffix.

>IBM was selling a full height drive that was slower than molasses (part of
>the reason being that by default the drive always did verifies when writing).

Is this a mode-page settable thing? I'm getting 500KB/sec writes, and I hate
that.

	-Kenny

-- 
Kenneth R. Crudup, Unix & OS/2 Software Consultant, Scott County Consulting
kenny@panix.com		CI$: 75032,3044	  +1 617 524 5929/4949 Home/Office
16 Plainfield St, Boston, MA 02130-3633	  +1 617 983 9410      Fax
OS/2 box: pkenny.tiac.net (when I'm online) Get Warp-ed! OS/2 3.0 is here NOW!