On Sat, 29 Jul 2000 13:02:22 +0200, the world broke into rejoicing as
"Ruud H.G. van Tol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> > feng:
> > I am planning to install a PCI SCSI controller and a external backup
> > drive on my Pentium 90 machine with Redhat 6.1. But I don't know what
> > brand and model of hardware I should buy. Could you please give me some
> > recommendation? It would be better if you had setup something like that
> > before and like it. Thank you.
>
> I normally go for
> SCSI: NCR-875 U2W (dead cheap, perfect performance and suport,
> faster than any tapedrive needs), about USD 100.
> Tape drive: HP DDS3 or better, about USD 1000.
> Or did you mean an external harddisk backup drive?
One problem: That solution is likely to cost many times what a P90
computer is worth.
I could probably get a P90 PC for about USD 200; a tape drive costing
five times as much as the computer is not going to look like a terribly
good value.
That being said, there are few _cheap_ alternatives. Pricing of
CPUs, memory, and disk drives have made for "low, low prices,"
meaning you can readily get a PC for USD 500 that is pretty usable
at least for desktop purposes.
The increases in functionality and decreases in pricing for tape drives
have not been _nearly_ so aggressive.
<http://www.tdl.com/~netex/data/dat.html> lists a variety of
backup devices and relevant pricing:
-> Ecrix VAX-1 tape drive (around $1000 for a 66GB SCSI-2 tape drive)
-> DLT 40/80 GB tape ($1400-$1500)
-> OnStream IDE/SCSI Tape Drive: 30-50GB ($310 for 30GB IDE, $690 for
50GB SCSI)
-> DDS-4 4mm DAT - 20GB ($1250)
-> DDS-3 4mm DAT - 12GB ($900)
-> DDS-2 4mm DAT - 4GB ($550-$600)
-> DDS-1 4mm DAT - 2GB ($540)
-> AIT AME 8mm tape - 25GB ($2250)
-> Travan TR5 10GB Tape ($340 IDE, $450 SCSI)
Pricing is pretty daunting for many of these.
There are parallel port options, priced to sell to home PC users;
those solutions tend not to be of high reliability.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>
"...In my phone conversation with Microsoft's lawyer I copped to the
fact that just maybe his client might see me as having been in the
past just a bit critical of their products and business
practices. This was too bad, he said with a sigh, because they were
having a very hard time finding a reporter who both knew the industry
well enough to be called an expert and who hadn't written a negative
article about Microsoft." -- Robert X. Cringely
