From: Rick Russell <wrr3118@tamsun.tamu.edu>
Subject: REVIEW: Mirror RM88 Removable Cartridge Drive 
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 92 23:22:00 CDT 


DATE: 9/17/92

REVIEW: The MIRROR RM88 Removable Cartridge Drive

Configuration Tested:

A MIRROR RM88 connected to

1) Mac SE/30 8/80 and System 7.0.1 w/ TuneUp 1.1

2) Mac IIfx with 8/80 and System 7.0 w/ TuneUp 1.1, 8*24 Video Card

3) Mac IIcx with 5/40 and System 7.0.1 w/ TuneUp 1.1, System 6.0.8,
Asante Ethernet and Mac II Video, assorted bizarre and unusual
software.

PRICING

The advertised price for the drive was $647, with one cartridge. I
purchased the drive with an extra cartridge and two-day UPS shipping
for a total of $767.50. MIRROR sells individual 88MB cartridges for
$99 apiece. I seem to recall that standard ground shipping (~6 working
days) cost $12.50, two-day cost $19.50, and next-day cost $36.50 or
so.

These prices were current in February 1992.

PACKING LIST

- the main unit (88MB SQ5110 drive mechanism)

- two cartridges (one came with the drive,
  I purchased the other for $99)

- a SCSI Mac-to-Peripheral cable (25 pin to 50 pin)

- a standard gray terminator

- a standard 3-prong power cord

- installation/operation manual

- two disks with formatting, and backup software

WARRANTY

MIRROR warrants their hard drive mechanisms for two years after date
of purchase. The cartridge media is warranted for 90 days after date
of purchase.

PACKAGING

The drive came on time in a relatively well-padded box. The foam
inserts fit the drive well, although they looked rather flimsy (they
were actually foam glued to cardboard inserts). The extra cartridges
and other paraphernalia were in the box too. There was no shipping
damage of any kind.

PHYSICAL MECHANISM

The main mechanism was a standard zero-foot-print drive with a
push-button SCSI ID setter, two SCSI ports, two three-prong power
outlets, a standard roller-type on-off switch, and a screw-in fuse.
All switches, plugs and outlets were mounted on the rear panel.

The case had large rubber bumpers on the bottom, and was made of metal
on all of four of the 'flat' sides (sides, top and bottom). The front
panel was plastic, with power and access LEDs and the standard Syquest
eject buttons and levers. The drive did have a good (but loud) cooling
fan, with vents on the bottom of the drive.

I placed the drive under an SE/30 and under three other drives (two
HDs and a CD-ROM); it seemed to bear weight placed on top with no
problem. It stands slightly lower than an Apple HD SC hard drive case.
I wouldn't recommend piling several drives *and* a Mac on top of it,
since it didn't look that sturdy.

A MacUser review says that internally, the drive mechanism is shielded
from the power supply by a metal sheet. I had no opportunity (or
desire!) to open the drive and examine the internal construction.

INSTALLATION, SOFTWARE and DOCUMENTATION

Installation was easy, if not well explained. The manual shipped with
the drive was designed for all MIRROR hard drive products; the
'standard' installation instructions had notes and advisories for
removable drive users. Fortunately, installation was trivial. Plug-in
was standard, and the drive exhibited no termination or SCSI ID
problems when installed normally as SCSI device 6.

The MediaManager 2.22 drive software was a bit clunky, but easy to
use. The software used modal dialogs exclusively, and it didn't switch
under Multifinder or System 7 (probably a good thing for a drive
formatter). There was internal help (hold down the option key and move
the cursor to see help for each on-screen region), but it was not as
seamless as balloon help. It seemed to have the full requisite of
features (multiple partitions, password protection, etc); I had no
need for these features. The formatter software and accompanying
utilities seemed to work the same under System 6 and System 7.

Very little information was provided for removable users exclusively;
in particular, there was no information on handling the cartridges and
how to store them. They seemed to respond well to common sense
treatment. Just remember that there's a full blown hard drive platter
in there, and treat it with respect!

The software came with a formatter utility, a backup utility, a
control-panel mounter utility, and an automounting INIT for removable
users. The formatter tried to automatically install the automounter
for me; under System 7 it put the INIT in the System folder, not the
Extensions folder. This was corrected manually, and it probably
doesn't make any difference for the automounter's operation. The
control panel is designed primarily for mounting partitions, but it
can be used to mount dismounted cartridges. I had no occasion to use
the mounter utility or the backup utility; both were pretty modal and
had the same interface as the formatting software. MIRROR claims that
all of its software is VM and 32-bit addressing compatible; I had no
need to try either. Note that you cannot get VM on the catridge drive
unless you put your system folder on the cartridge drive and boot from
it. Of course, this makes your cartridge non-removable!

The first cartridge in the package came with 15 MB of shareware and
demo software. Most of the software (except for Disinfectant and
SCSIProbe) were old versions, and I would not recommend that their
free software be used on most new Macs. I trashed almost all of it,
but then it was free.

GENERAL DRIVE BEHAVIOR

The great thing about the Syquest removables is that they act just
like standard fixed hard drives. When I added the drive, I instantly
had 83MB of storage available (about 10MB more than a standard Quantum
80). In order to use System 7 file sharing with the drive, I had to
make sure the cartridge was in the drive when file sharing was
started, and the cartridge could not be ejected (i.e. put away) until
file sharing was turned off. With file sharing turned off, the
cartridges could be put away and re-mounted just like floppy disks.

The drive was fairly loud while operating; it made frequent noises
during access. It reminded me of the old 20MB internal drives on the
Mac SE. The cooling fan was fairly loud as fans go; it was about as
loud as my SE/30. The noise did not appear to be related to any
mechanical problem; to date the drive has had no mechanical problems.

Drive speed was about the same as a Quantum 80 MB drive (e.g. an Apple
80 MB HD SC). I ran Diskbasher 1.1 on the cartridge drive and an
internal Quantum 80 MB hard drive, both on a Mac IIfx, and the
Diskbasher tests indicated that the cartridge drive was slightly
faster than the 80MB internal. I have no better way of quantifying the
drive speed. In real-world use (games, spreadsheets, word processing,
disk optimizing) the drive seemed to be slightly slower than a Quantum
80, but still fast enough for primary storage use. I set up a system
folder (6.0.5 and 7.0) on the cartridge drive and it worked just fine;
the removable media seems fine for both backup and primary storage.
Perhaps there is a perceived slowness when using the Syquest because
it chirps on every drive access, like the old hard drives in the Mac
SEs.

There were really only two weaknesses in the Syquest mechanism. The
first was the media. The Syquest cartridges are removable hard drive
platters, and they appear to be very fragile. I was very careful with
my cartridges and only stored them in their original padded cases; to
date I have had no problem with the media. Nevertheless, the
cartridges should not be treated like floppy disks or CDs under any
circumstances. Dropping them or stepping on them is probably a
sentence of death for the data on the disk, and it's very likely that
the disk will be rendered totally unusable and unrecoverable. My
policy is that a Syquest disk should always reside in one of two
places: inside the mechanism, or inside its original plastic case in a
closed drawer.

The second weakness in the Syquest design is cartridge insertion and
ejection. When the cartridge is inserted, a lever flips over and a
button pops out, and the cartridge 'spins up' to full speed. There is
no automatic ejection; to eject the disk, one must press the button,
wait for the disk to spin to a stop (~10 secs), and reset the ejection
lever.The lever which ejects the cartridge requires a good bit of
effort to flip over, which came as a surprise the first time I tried
it. The whole process is several steps, and it seems to me that there
is ample opportunity to screw up while messing with the delicate
cartridge. Fortunately, I haven't screwed up yet. The manual warns
that turning off the drive mechanism *before* ejecting the disk is
very bad. With the power off, the disk 'braking' mechanism is
disabled, and the disk could take 60 seconds or more to spin to a
stop. Obviously, if you do not know this important tidbit, you could
eject the disk while it is still spinning, possibly (probably?)
damaging the disk. Also note that inserting a damaged disk into the
mechanism may damage the mechanism. The watchwords seem to be 'take
care'.

Outside of those minor complaints, I have been very pleased with the
MIRROR 88MB removable. It has worked exactly as advertised, by
providing 83MB of formatted, fast, effective storage, at a relatively
good price ($99 per cartridge, about $1.20 per megabyte). Heck, I used
to pay more for high density disk storage back when they were $20 per
box. If I had a more professional drive formatter, like Silverlining
or Disk Manager Mac, I would probably use it, but for now Mirror's own
MediaManager does the job just fine.

MIRROR is a solid company, and while I do not anticipate hardware
problems with the drive (it's worked faultlessly to date), it is good
to know that MIRROR is there if I need them. During the sale, the
MIRROR salespeople seemed knowledgeable, and they were able to answer
all my technical questions (about VM, system 7, reliability, etc).

Having had some experience with Macintoshes in different system
configurations, I think I am qualified to recommend the MIRROR RM88 to
anyone who needs a large amount of storage in medium-sized chunks. For
people who work with data files less than 80MB, and who do not require
lightning-fast storage, the MIRROR (or a similar Syquest-based 88MB
removable drive) should serve well. The closest competition is the
IOMEGA Bernoulli 90MB removable drive, with a base cost about $150
more and a cartridge cost of about $30 more.

Review by William R. Russell, Jr.
          wrr3118@tamsun.tamu.edu