[slug stuff]

[richard welty <welty%lewis.crd.ge.com@RELAY.CS.NET>]

   From: bruno%oz.geo.washington.edu@crdgw1

   We are interested
   in adding additional disk drives to our symbolics without paying
   them an arm and a leg.

actually, symbolics disk prices are no more outrageous than
sun disk prices, suprisingly enough, and symbolics makes it
fairly easy to add drives purchased elsewhere (while the small
scsi drives are easy to put on suns, adding a large smd not
purchased from sun is apparently nearly impossible.)

    What needs to be done to do this?? Does it
   involve the infamous breath of life tape that sym. guards with their
   life??

in essence, you need to find a source for the particular drive
that you want to install.  For example, the Imprinis (formerly
CDC) 9720-736 (a 736 mbyte drive) can be purchased for around
$5300.  the necessary cable set costs slightly under $200.  when
you get the drive, it comes with a paper copy of the bad blocks
listing.  for a fee of ca. $500, symbolics will take this list
and produce the necessary IFS tape.  for an additional $500,
symbolics field service will install the drive for you.  the total
cost for the 736 will come to ca. $6500; the last time i got
a quote from symbolics on the whole package through them, it came
to around $15,000.  we've installed one 736 this way, and are in
the process of purchasing another.  the savings on disk is roughly
equivalent to the cost of one 2mw board for a 36xx machine; very
nice when you're on a limited budget.

also, symbolics will cheerfully pick up maintenence on a disk
installed this way.

on the whole, we have no complaints about symbolics disk costs;
for only a little work, you can get lots of disk pretty cheaply.

right at the moment, we're trying to find out if we can save
any money by scraping the 169mb drives in our 3600s -- maintenence
costs appear to be by spindle rather than by capacity, and
substituting a 736 for 4 169s may pay back in about a year.

richard