Re: External HD usage question

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <eliasj-0912951119200001@eliasj.gould.pvt.k12.me.us>,
Joran Elias <eliasj@gould.pvt.k12.me.us> wrote:
>   Does anybody have any experience using the very popular Mac Zip or EZ
>drives as external drives with their IIgs?  If so, which one would you
>recomend, the Zip or the EZ.  I ask cuz I have a Powerbook that I would
>like to use it with, but I have lots of stuff on my old IIgs that I would
>like to use the Zip or EZ to backup with.  Any help would be appreciated.
>Thanks.

   Both are supposed to be able to work just fine with the RamFAST
SCSI card (you might need some of the later ROM versions), and pretty
well with the Apple High Speed SCSI card (the Apple card doesn't do
disk changes all that hot, so if you change disks, powering down your
computer might be needed). They're normal enough SCSI devices that
hooking them up should not be a problem, unless your SCSI bus is full,
bad cabling, needs to be terminated, or any other host of SCSI
tweaking needed.

   I haven't used either, but they're supposed to be fairly similar.
According to a review in a recent Mac magazine, the Zip's cartridges
were a lot more shockproof-- they said they could throw them against
walls (not while using them, though :) and the data would survive
fine. Syquests couldn't do that, but I'm not sure if that's really a
limitation most of us care about. The Zip also can only be SCSI ID 5
or 6, whilt the Syquest is more flexible. (IDs only are important in
that you can't have two devices with the same ID; if both 5 and 6 are
already taken in your system, you'd have to move the one on 5 to
something else).

   If I recall correctly, the mac magazine seemed to favor the Zip
over the Syquest by a little-- the little extra head movement speed
(not too noticable when copying large chunks like backups) and space
of the Syquest wasn't enough for the extra $.

Nathan Mates
-- 
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/      <*>
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