On Tue, 30 Jul 1996 11:17:20 -0400 Michael Cammer wrote:
 
Dear Michael
 
We used to have a western digital scsi interface for a sony mo drive.
When we switched it to an adaptec scsi interface everything was ok but
the drive wouldn't read the old disks. This seemed like a pain but the
adaptec is a much better (plug and play) interface. So I recommed it
to you. As far as you archived data goes you would need temporary
storage to move it all over to the new format. I know that might not
be possible but it might solve the interface problems.
 
I hope this helps...
 
Mark Cannell
>
> This is not a query but a follow-up answer to our own question of
about
> two months ago.
>
> The Northgate 386/387 running CoMos for the BioRad MRC 600 died.  We
> temporarily got the system to run on an old Swan 386/387; it was as
> simple as plug-and-play except that disk access creeped.  Popping
the cards
> in a new Gateway Pentium with three IDE slots was also as simple as
> plug-and-play (the difficult part was ordering a Pentium with three
IDE
> slots).  We do get an error message when CoMos starts running, but
> performance does not seem to be compromised.
>
> On the other hand, getting the old Sony SMO drive to work was not as
> simple.  Sony was unable to provide us with technical support for
the
> driver although they were very forthcoming with info on the
hardware; we
> called Sony because the company that wrote the driver software seems
to
> no longer exist.  We have the disk drive running with the driver set
with
> the /p option which, buried in the manual says runs slower than
using the
> proper DMA settings.  If anybody has clues regarding the proper DMA
> settings, please let us know, we'd love to have the system run
quicker.
>
> Anyhow, getting the confocal running on an alternate PC was easier
than
> we expected-- only four or five hours on hold for technical support.
>
> -Michael