19 Nov
2007
19 Nov
'07
9:52 p.m.
From: tshoppa at wmata.com
Chuck wrote:
In the late 90's, we were using Micropolis drives in our HaL
computers. Many wouldn't even finish our 24 Hour burn-in.
When they were making choices as to which drive to use,
I was surprised when I was told that they'd go with the Micropolis
drive. By that time, they'd already earned a bad name.
I was told that the decision was made, based on that fact
that they would give us any engineering support we needed.
I saw this as a red flag but the upper people didn't. I couldn't
understand why we would need any support for something
as mature as hard drives of the time.
I suspect that bad marketing decisions were made at Micropolis,
like the ones that were made at HaL. Engineering didn't have there
act to gether before the products were in production. I've
seen it happen at otherplaces. Schedule is king and at some
point the engineers will just stand and nod their heads ( as
they get their resumes ready ).
Dwight
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Micropolis floppy drives were very well-made. I
wish that modern
drives could be as well-built. All of mine are still operational.
I think that like CDC/Imprimis, Seagate, Shugart, etc., Micropolis
built drives to different price points for different markets.
The ones built for the mini and mainframe market in the late
80's/very early 90's are true tanks and stand up very solidly
here 15 or 20 years later.
But by the mid-late-90's when capacity was the craze I think that
some industrial-duty Micropolis drives were a little too bleeding
edge.
The MFM ones built for PC-clones, however, seem to simply be "above
average", which is pretty good but not stellar.