Message-ID: <716@ames.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Dec-84 13:15:13 EST
Article-I.D.: ames.716
Posted: Wed Dec 19 13:15:13 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 01:39:01 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center, Mtn. View, CA
Lines: 87

[]

	This is a summary of the information I received about the Sider
hard disk for the Apple. My thanks to all who responded to my query.
My personal decision is to wait a while before purchasing one of these
units, both because $695.00, though a very attractive price, is a lot
of money, and because the unit has not been around long enough for any
information on its long-term reliability to be available, yet.
**************************************************************************

 >  	When I saw the ad I immediately noticed two key item of information
 >  were missing and called the company. The person I spoke to was amazed that
 >  they had been omitted from the ad's copy and supplied them, to wit:
 >  
 >  	Average seek time: 95ms.
 >  	Transfer rate: 5 mbits/sec.
 >  
 >  	My understanding is that the low price was made possible by using a
 >  5 1/4 inch winchester with "small footprint" technology. If you look through
 >  Byte Magazine, you'll notice a few new 10mbyte drives for the IBM PC in
 >  the same price range and using the same new technology.
------------------
 >  I was concerned also and I called the manufacturer.  The are in 
 >  business about 2 months.  Have sold 250 of them.  It is a miniscribe
 >  drive and a Xebec (sp?) controller.  
 >  It is not a special limited price and will be their standard price.
 >  Therefore my logic is- since I can't readily afford it now,
 >  wait till it's out there and there's some feedback on it.
------------------
 >  I have purchased one of the Sider units. It arrived two days ago.
 >  Except for formatting the disk and setting up files, I have not had
 >  a real chance to use it. It did arrive in good shape, and the diagnostic
 >  program indicates that there were no bad sectors.
 >  
 >  Installation was fairly straight forward, you connect mount a cable and
 >  plug attachment to the back of the apple, and attach the other end of
 >  of the cable to the controller board. Then you attach a second cable
 >  from the outside of the apple to the drive. You can daisy-chain up to
 >  2 drives together, but if you do not use a second drive, you need to
 >  attach a null plug to the other I/O port. The instructions are 
 >  complete, but could use more illustrations.
 >  
 >  You can then configure up to four operating systems, DOS 3.3,
 >  Apple PASCAL (1.1 or 1.2), PRODOS and one of two flavors of CPM. A minor
 >  flaw is that each operating system will use about 100k even if you don't
 >  actually use it. Also each operating system has its own boundary on the
 >  disk and these cannot be changed without reformatting.
 >  
 >  The disk is fairly quiet, allthough the rotating drive does make a
 >  humming noise similar to a small fan. It accesses data quietly (no
 >  clatter), and as far as I can tell so far, is reasonably fast, (but I
 >  have not really had time to test this).
 >  
 >  The literature does not actually state who the drive manufacturer is,
 >  but one of the utilities has a xybek (sp?) copyright, so that is
 >  a good guess.
 >  
 >  A word of caution, no real information is given on the internals of
 >  the DOS's used, so if you have a card that uses a patched DOS, it
 >  might not be simple to patch into FCP's DOS. I have not had time to
 >  explore this further....
 >  
 >  Overall, I am pleased with the quality of the unit I was shipped. I 
 >  found only one documentation bug (I setting up pascal) and this was
 >  obvious and easy to work arround. If I am still happy after a month
 >  or so of use, then I might buy a second drive.
----------------

	I, also, called the company, and was told that their disk, though
compatable with both the Apple ][+ and ][e, is not compatable with the
old Apple ][. My machine is a ][, though I have put Applesoft on the
motherboard, making it essentially a ][+. They told me that, if their
disk would not work on my machine, I could return it within 15 days for
a full refund.

	My thanks, also, to T.J. Jardine, who posted a separate message
about the Sider disk he/she recently acquired. I would also appreciate
it if any/all owners of the Sider would post a note if they have any
problems with their units in the future.
	Again, my thanks to all.

-  From the Crow's Nest  -                      Kenn Barry
                                                NASA-Ames Research Center
                                                Moffett Field, CA
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