Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 11:48:42 -0500 From: The Classiest Man Alive <ksmm@cybercom.net> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: 3M LS-120 support ? Message-ID: <3.0.3.32.19980128114842.009b2e40@cybercom.net> In-Reply-To: <199801281440.PAA12925@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de>
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Based on my recent experience with one of these drives, I would recommend avoiding them. In addition to being significantly slower than my iomega zip and jaz drives, the LS-120 was not compatible with a lot of software. For some reason, my drive kept reporting that its size was 1.39 MB instead of 1.44. This prevented software that creates floppies (e.g., Windows recovery disk, FreeBSD's boot disk) from being able to build the media. It also seemed to interfere with my ability to boot FreeBSD from CD-ROM. I can easily play Duke Nukem 3D straight off a zip drive (well, the SCSI one at least). On the LS-120 the same game was frame rate hell. With SyQuest tripping over its own feet, I think that iomega has won this round. Just one person's opinion, K.S. At 03:40 PM 1/28/98 +0100, Oliver Fromme wrote: >Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> wrote in list.freebsd-hardware: > > > In fact, they're _damned_ slow, only about five times faster > > > than a regular floppy. > > > > Hmm. I was seeing around the 500K/sec mark out of the ATAPI Zip I was > > testing last night. It's a bit hard to be sure exactly how quick it is > > though as the machine it's on has too much memory. (ie. if you run > > iozone <2xmemory size> the file doesn't fit on the disk 8) > > > > How does this compare with an LS-120? > >About the same. By the way, they also state on their web site >that the drive is about five times faster than a regular >floppy, and they say it's ~ 560 Kb/s sustained data transfer. >These numbers don't quite match, since a regular floppy has >an actual throuput of about 50 Kb/s. Anyway, it's slow in both >cases. > >I'd recommend to buy an MO drive. Those 640 Mb MO drives are >really nice. Sure, the drive is somewhat more expensive, but >in the long run you save money, since the disks are considerably >chaper than ZIPs or LS120 floppies. > >Regards > Oliver Fromme > >PS: No need to Cc me replies, I read the list through a mail- >to-news gateway (sorry, I broke the Reply-To header in my >previous posting). > >-- >Oliver Fromme, Leibnizstr. 18-61, 38678 Clausthal, Germany >(Info: finger userinfo:olli@dorifer.heim3.tu-clausthal.de) > >
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