On 10/3/17 12:10 PM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk wrote:
On 10/03/2017 05:37 AM, wrco...@wrcooke.net wrote:
fwiw in the late 80s I was the service department at a small PC
store. I remember seeing these newfangled drives in Compaq
computers, but I don't remember exactly when. Perhaps 88? Wikipedia
backs me up that it was Compaq (with WD drives?) as the first large
customer.
Wikipedia is many times wrong, edit please.
Everyone seems to be calling the Compaq drives "Western Digital". They
weren't WD--they were CDC Wren II HH drives with a WD controller
embedded. WD didn't get into the drive business until much, much later.
Likely cause, they fact they used WD chipset (1100 series). so it must be WD
which was far from true.
I went back and checked my documents. The ATA drive that I had was, in
fact, a Wren II. For all I know, it was the same one that Compaq put in
its boxes, as I picked it up on the surplus market.
It was not a good drive--it failed within a year or so and I scrapped
it. I understand that my experience with the drive was not unique.
I had three, two crapped fast and one has held up for years... Then again
I have a Bigfoot 1gb drive that has been good too but that is unusual as
well.
The market saw a lot of that like Segate ST3660, very bad! The ST3660A
however was a good drive with better than average life.
That's very different from my experience with the FH Wren drives. I've
still got a SCSI one installed and running in a 386 box.
Same here. the worst drive was a WD 8gb scsi, failure date (note rate!)
was
about one year after install in the server rack. I had 5 fail and all
got replaced
with Baracudas.
I ahve a few oddballs from Compaq (of the we own DEC era) hardware that
look like SCSI (50 pin) but are not. They are 3.5" but fat.
Allison
--Chuck
