<155 at efreet.UUCP>

[Chris Gonnerman]

In article <285600002 at adaptx1>, neese at adaptx1.UUCP writes:
> >2) Has anybody had any experience getting the Sysquest SQ55 SCSI drive to
> >work with an Adaptec 1542B and SCO ODT?  I am trying to decide between
> >a fixed disk like a 340MB SCSI Micropolis or a 44MB removable like the
> >SQ55.  Any reliability problems with the SQ55?
> 
> I don't believe ODT will support the SyQuest drive. At least it may not
> spin it up, lock it, spin it down and unlock it.  If the media has already
> spun up, it might work.

Has anyone ever had *good* luck with a Syquest SQ55 disk drive?  We have
a lot of them where I work (40 or more) and they seem very prone to
failures, not to mention "flaky behavior."  For instance, I had one such
drive which (under MS-DOS) acted like the disk was under heavy access
when the OS was in fact quite idle.  I changed drive and controller
before I discovered it was the cartridge!  I have also seen full system
lockups (no interrupts so CTRL-ALT-DEL does not work) from trying to
copy a large (600K) file from one directory to another on a newly
formatted, nearly empty cartridge.  I rebooted, and tryed again.  Same
result.  Tryed again after powering down all components, same result.
Gave up and removed the drive.

In other words, in our experience the SQ55 has SERIOUS reliability
problems.  Enough that the next removeable drives we buy will be
Bernoulli... they aren't perfect, but they seem to break in a
predictable fashion.

-- 
 +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
 | Chris Gonnerman (Mad Programmer At Large)   csusac.ecs.csus.edu!tree!jcg   |
 | @ the Tree BBS, Sacramento, CA              ucbvax!ucdavis!csusac!tree!jcg |
 +----------  DISCLAIMER: These opinions are mine... MINE, I say!  -----------+