Re: Upgrading a IBM 301C

[Christian Carey <ccarey@CapAccess.org>]

On Thursday, 14th November 1996, James E. Ackermann wrote:

> I need the answer to one more question relative updating a 701 C.  I am
> adding a cd rom drive and need input as to whether to purchase a drive
> with a pc card interface or a parallel interface.  In addition any
> information on specific drives would be appreciated. 

I have one of each, and given my light CDROM usage, either one works about
as well as the other. The advantage of the PC-Card CDROM is the greater
portability, and the advantage of the parallel CDROM is the lesser cost.
For the parallel, you might want to consider one of the RoadRunner series
from Disctec (I got the 4X model, and there's an 8X model available); 
there's support for it on the 701C's restoration CDROM (available for
about $40 + shipping from IBM) and diskette (get the latest image from the
IBM FTP site). The RoadRunner series also has OS/2 3.0 support. (I don't
know about OS/2 4.0, though - try checking Disctec's web site.) PC
Warehouse is one of a number of retailers that sell the Disctec line. I
chose the 2X Sony PRD-150 PC-Card CDROM drive mainly because it was
available for a good price at the time; to my knowledge, there's no OS/2
support for the Sony, but it's apparently on the supported list of the
FreeBSD PCMCIA ("PAO") project. I don't know what sort of Linux support is
available for either of them. I'd guess that unless you have some app that
demands high CDROM performance, you can't go wrong either way.
--
Christian Carey (ccarey@CapAccess.ORG) +1 301 431 0053