Who is using Removable disk/drives with Xenix?
David A. Wilson
dave at sea375.UUCP
Sat Oct 1 13:50:38 AEST 1988
I have an application that requires that the entire system resides on
removable media. I am looking for anyone with experience running SCO Xenix
or Microport on an AT with removeable disks(ie: disk drives or cartridges).
I am currently running SCO Xenix in a configuration consisting of an AT
with an external IOMEGA Bernoulli Box 20+20(8 inch media). Disk performance
is very slow, most programs take longer to load than to complete. When using
2 disks it is sometimes even worse because I/O will not occur on more than
1 drive at a time. SCO stills supports this configuration, but considers it
obsolete so future support will be limited. Also, the total capacity of
40 MB with 2 disks is barely adequate for my larger customers database,
which will continue to grow indefinitely.
The requirements that the disk subsystem should satisfy are:
- Easy and reliable insertion and removal of media.
Media is inserted and removed at least once a day, possibly several times.
- Media interchangability between computers. Disk must be able to work in
one of several machines(usually the same type of computer).
- Relatively low cost per megabyte. Media cost should be comparable to
current fixed hard disks on PC's.
- Good system support for the device. It should be able to use standard disk
device drivers, or else a reliable driver must be provided for Xenix.
- Provide a range of disk capacities from 20 MB up to 100-200MB without
changing device drivers or hardware interface cards.
It seems that a subsystem providing a carrier to accept an ST506-compatible
disk drive and connected to a standard ST506 controller installed in
a PC slot would do the job. Is there such a system? Does it work with SCO
Xenix? What disk capacities are available for it?
--
David A. Wilson
uw-beaver!tikal!slab!sea375!dave
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