Oct 86 Mousehole
Volume Number: 2
Issue Number: 10
Column Tag: Mousehole Report
Mousehole Report 
By Rusty Hodge, Mousehole BBS
More On Hard Disks
Rusty Hodge, Sys Op
The battle of the hard disks continues. A few of the newer players are the ProApp
20, the Easy Drive, the HyperDrive FX-20 and a few others I'm forgetting to mention.
So what is so special about these drives?
The ProAPP will work on a SCSI port, or on a 512 through the disk port, or on
an Apple //e or //c. You can partition the drive between Apple // and Mac, even use
them simultaneously to a limited extent (if one is accessing the drive while the other
tried, you'll get a nasty I/O error). They tell me it's not supposed to work that way,
but it does. Speedwise, the ProAPP seems about as fast as the Dataframe, although the
particular unit I have is a bit noisier.
The Easy Drive is the true mass storage winner. About as pretty as a LoDown
(read: plain), but you can't beat 45mb for $1500 and 60mb for a couple hundred
more. Can't say more because I only played with one briefly but hope to have one by
next month (hint hint...).
Last, but we hope not least is the HyperDrive FX-20, General Computer's first
entry into the SCSI market. Novel features include keeping the SCSI parameters in the
drive's own parameter RAM, therefore allowing you to graphically set it up on the SCSI
chain. It also comes with most of the traditional Hyper goodies including the backup and
security programs, however no Drawers and no HyperNet! It is also big, boxy and
ugly... but then who am I to say? (Still, a lot of people think the IBM PC is a great
looking box...)
Tecmar
BEAKER
Did everyone know what happened to Tecmar? They were having some financial
problems, but someone thought they'd be a good investment, so Tecmar got bought
(believe it or not, Tecmar was privately held).
Anyway, three weeks ago, about 110 people were laid off, around 1/5 of the
employees. The guy I report to is still there. We talked about their new product, but I
can't say. I did get some information that MacDrive owners should be interested in. To
print with the MacDrive, you need to use the Imagewriter driver that was supplied on
the MacDrive 2.2 boot disk. Yes, this sucks. This means that if you have an
Imagewriter II, you can't use any of its wonderful features. Sorry. Everything else in
the 3.2 System works.
He told me that there WILL be a new version of the MacDrive software, version
2.3. It'll have some neat stuff and will fix the Imagewriter problem. One other
thing. HFS works fine on a MacDrive, just make a single ten-meg volume. The Volume
Manager doesn't know about HFS, so it'll say "This volume has not been initialized" but
fear not. You can still mount the volume, and set it to be the startup volume. The only
problem is that the System file needs to be in the Root. This in turn means that ALL
system files need to be in the root, because the "System Folder" is only magic if it
actually contains the System file.
RUSTY HODGE
There is a way to make the Tecmar run HFS and still keep the system stuff in the
system folder. How do I know? I've got one doing that. I think it is because I'm using
the HD-20 startup file. The 128k ROMS should do the same thing according to The
Anarchist, but we haven't been able to try this.
New Book
MACOWACO
A new book is on the shelves by the same company that produced Chernicoff's
stuff called Object Oriented Programming on the Macintosh, by Kurt Schmucker. A
quick scan showed a ton on MacApp. It's been over a year and a half since I spoke to
Tesler about MacApp. There's a book on it, lots of press, but no MacApp! Reminds me of
MacBASIC! [Note: Kurt Schmucker is doing a special issue in MacTutor on MacApp.
Watch for it shortly. -Ed.] RE: the Object oriented programming course at NB. A bunch
of us went to hear Mike Miller talk about development over a year ago, and he preached
ExperLisp... well? He also told us the LaserWriter will never be a major product.... He
also told us that C is a terrible language and nothing significant will ever be produced
with it on the Mac...... Yawn.
Hard Disks at the Mac Expo
JACK KOBZEFF
One thing that I noticed at the show. Almost everyone who was not promoting one
brand of hard disk or another (in other words, who got to choose which hard disk to
use) was using the DataFrame 20. There were a couple of exceptions, but the vast
majority were SuperMac DataFrames. I think that this indicates something - what, I'm
not sure. [Remember the first MacWorld Expo, where there were Corvus Omnidrives
everywhere? Dèja Vu? -Rusty]
[Don't say that, Rusty, I just bought two Data Frames! Ouch. -Ed.]
AST complaints
JIM REEKES
I've been fooling around with the AST 2000 and 4000 and don't like it. First of
all, it is VERY expensive. What do you get for the money? A hard disk system with
integral tape back-up device. OK fine, it better knock my socks off. How does it work?
Well, with the 4000 I want the ability to select a folder and backup everything in it.
Sorry, no can do. Promised, but not ready. Oh well, how about a complete volume back
up? Well, you can only back up 60mb, not the complete volume. How fast is it? I wish
I could tell you this, but after waiting for a hour I gave up and rebooted. AST said,
"You need the lastest version, it's faster and available on our BBS". OK, fine. Called
them, downloaded the stuff, and installed it. Here we go again. "Complete (well almost a
complete) Volume Backup". This time I rebooted after 30 minutes, never did get a
backup. And another thing, what about the last 13 or so megabytes? Does it just get
ignored, or can you back it up? The AST 2000 is a 20mb drive with a mini-tape
drive. The tape device in the 2000 seems real bogus to me. Loud and slow. My biggest
complaint against it is that you have to "Format the tape"! Why do you need to format
tape? The format procedure takes over a hour; it doesn't come formatted from the
factory. The first 2000 failed to format the tape. OK fine. "What's the problem?" I
asked AST. They said I probably have a bad tape, try another one. I had been using the
tape they supplied with the drive. The second tape failed, too. Two out of two, and no
backup yet. Has anyone successfully backed up an AST? How many minutes per
megabyte did it take? Our entire accounting software is stored on two 22mb drives.
Including the time it takes to load in a fresh "unformatted" tape and push a button, we
can back up 40mb in under five minutes. What is AST's problem? I like the speed of
their 4000, but without a complete backup device, forget it.
AST Drives
GARY VOTH
The main reason you have to format the tape drive is that AST configures it as an
on-line volume; that is, it comes up in the Finder with its icon and behaves like an HFS
disk. To do a backup, you simply do a Finder select-and-drag to move folders and
files onto the tape. Their low-level device handlers are supposed do the rest. I know
the thing works, since I saw one up and running at the Apple Business Forum in Long
Beach. The price, however, seems a bit steep. AST, like Iomega Corp., is a big player
in the corporate MIS market. I would recommend their products to a large buyer, but
steer the individual user to something less expensive. My recommendation for a SCSI
device at this moment is the DataFrame 20 by SuperMac. It's fast and reliable. The
only person I know who had a problem with one called the company and they shipped a
replacement to him before they received his defective unit in return! There is no
reason, with a SCSI interface, to have the tape backup unit integral with the hard disk.
I would wait for a SCSI tape backup device from a respectable manufacturer and
purchase it separately. The other way to go for business buyers is with the Apple