🚀 go-pugleaf

Thor Legvold writes
> Hi gang.
> 
> After 3 Faxes (I'll send _one_ more today) to PLI without answer,
> I'm turning to the collective wisdom of 'the net'...
> 
> I have a 040 cube, and have sold the OD and the hard disk (330MB).
> 
> I was thinking of buying  a PLI Floptical as a replacement for
> the OD - sounds good to have compatibility with regular dos/unix/
> mac floppies and also have a 21 MB backup option when needed.
> 
Flopticals are great, but my experience with PLI was horrid.
You might want to try a removable optical instead. We use
the 128Meg opticals here for archiving, and they work well.

PLI has a bunch of literature about Q/A, but we got about 3 or 4
bad drives (out of about 6). The salesperson I delt with was basically
incompetent, although PLI had a good Tech Support group.

After some research, we tried a drive made by Pinnacle. It uses the
same Sony mechanism as the PLI drives, but there is one catch - if you
get UNFORMATTED 128Meg ODs, you have to low-level format them on a
Mac. I am not sure if the PLI has the same problem. (I would assume so -
because they did not provide any software for the NeXT.) If you get
Sony ODs, they come already low-level formatted for you, and this
is not a problem. (My PLI comes with a formatted Sony disk.)

If you do *not* want a Sony drive mechanism, take a look through any Mac
magazine. There are tons of ODs for sale there. Both the PLI and the
Pinnacle drives are basically Mac drives. PLI and Pinnacle both give
you a Mac floppy disk in the package.

Pinnacle's solution was not significantly better, but the drive
seems housed in a much higher quality casing, and it can stand
vertically if you are tight on space. It was also priced about the
same. (Sony doesn't come cheap!) The fan is noisy, so I would not
recommend it if you are going to be using the drive for daily work. But
for backups, it is a good quality Sony mechanism. I don't know if 
Pinnacle has Flopticals, but they are a good place to try first. The
Pinnacle 128Meg drive is part number REO-130S. 

You can reach Pinnacle in Southern California at:

(800) 553-7070 or
(714) 727-3300

(714) 727-1913 FAX

I dealt with Don Johnson. (Seriously!) :-)

Regards,

John
-- 
John Robison - john@oceania.com
NeXTMail Gladly Accepted
Remember - It all started with Pong.
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