From: cmwand@leland.Stanford.EDU (Christopher Wand)
Subject: Re: Syquest 150 ???
Organization: DSG, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA
Distribution: usa
Lines: 30

In article <93759@hydra.gatech.EDU> gt8798a@prism.gatech.EDU (Anthony S. Kim) writes:
>I remember someone mention about a 150meg syquest.  Has anyone else
>heard anything about this?  I'd be interested in the cost per megabyte and the
>approximate cost of the drive itself and how they compare to the Bernoulli 150.

I think you must be talking about the Syquest 105 (code named Mesa I believe).
It is a 3.5" Winchester technology drive pretty much like the other Syquest
drives in terms of how it works. According to the latest MacLeak, the 
drive has a 14.5 ms access time, 1.9 MB/s sustained throughput (these figures
are from memory so they could be slightly off, but they give you an idea of
performance nonetheless). The drive was originally released for the PC
and just recently was released for the Mac world (don't ask me what the 
differences are) and through they are currently in limited supply, according
to a Syquest rep. they are in the process of ramping up for mass production.
I have already seen them advertised by a number of manufacturers in MacLeak
including PLI, MassMicro, ClubMac, and MacWarehouse's PowerUser. The PLI
and MassMicro units are priced at just around $1000; the lesser name brands
are going for around $750 for an external drive. Cartridges which hold 
105 MB sell for about $80 each. At these prices, the drives and cartridges
are cheaper and better performing than the 88MB drives.
Cost per megabyte compares favorably with other cartridge drives and Bernoulli
drives, but for large amounts of data optical is still cheaper, and more
reliable.  Personally, I'm excited by the new drive and look forward to 
getting my hands on one.
-Chris Wand

-- 

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity."
                                                     - Frank Leahy