ESIX & IDE disks

[Chin Fang]

>I intend to buy a Gateway 2000 (386 based) micro and
>run ESIX on it. Does ESIX support an IDE 200 MB Maxtor
>disk, or do I have to buy a (more expensive) ESDI disk?

>Markus

I don't know about Maxtor IDE drives.  But I would like to recommand 
Cornor's 210 Mb IDE (or SCSI) drives.  The reasons:

(1) I have installed 2 IDE Cornor drives so far on two no name 33 Mhz 
    motherboards together with ESIX Rev.D with sucess. (different m.b.s)
(2) They are inexpansive (if you consider $850- for the drive and
    adapter inexpansive.  I did such in later Sept.  So Cornor drives 
    should cost less now)
(3) Cornor drives are very reliable (Stanford's Academic Information
    Resource SAs like them too - SCSI types however.). Most laptops use 
    Cornor products.  
(4) They are superbly quiet.  It is unbelieveable to someone who has 
    resigned to the chattering of typical hard drives like Fujisus.
(5) 3.5" form factor. Space saving.

I personally had lots troubles with low-capacity (40 megs) SCSI Maxtor drives
before (in a series of more then 10 attempts) so understandably I am
somewhat reluctant to go with Maxtors. I could be wrong however, because 
Maxtor's high capacity ESDI/SCSI drives are very popular in MSDOS Lans
(Novell etc) and the fact that Miniscribe is part of their lines now
and my Miniscribe 3130ESDI has been trouble-free for more then two 
years under various ESIX (Rev B - Rev.D).

Maybe someone else will give you some comments.  But I hope the above
info helpful to you.  

In short, IDE is fine with ESIX.

Regards,
 
Chin Fang
Mechanical Engineering Department
Stanford University
fangchin at portia.stanford.edu
fang at rocket.cadcam.rok.com