One of the ways in which computer manufacturers are trying to fill the hole in their margins left by the rush to open systems is to charge outrageous prices for disk drives and other peripherals and hope that inertia will prevent most users from shopping around for plug-compatible alternatives or do-it-yourself integrations. IBM leads the way with the disks for the AS/400 and the RS/6000, and Hewlett-Packard Co is right in there with two new families of high-performance SCSI-2 mass-storage systems: one for HP Apollo workstations and the other for its multi-user systems. The new products offer a base configuration of a disk or digital audio tape drive and the enclosure has room for additional disks, DDS format tapes, CD-ROMs and erasable optical disks where supported. Three new models have been introduced for workstation systems, housed in rack-mount and floor-standing enclosures, with base configuration capacities of 677Mb and 1,355Mb. Eight new or recently introduced models are available for multi-user systems and the company says they are the first SCSI-2 multi-device, mass-storage systems with power-fail-recovery capabilities it has offered to its multi-user customers. They come in rack or floor versions with a choice of initial capacity of 422Mb, 677Mb, 1,300Mb and 1,355Mb. The new ones are the HP Series 6000 Models 670SE, 1350SE and 1350S. The new ones for the workstations are the Models 670SE, 1350SE, and 1350S with base configuration of one disk drive, power supply and space for additional mass storage for the HP Apollo 9000 Series 400 and 700 workstations and the HP 9000 Series 300 workstation. Models 670SX and 1350SX, shipping this month, are designed for the HP 9000 Series 700s and feature a 10Mbyte-per-second differential SCSI-2 interface. They can grow to over 4Gb per cabinet and up to 38Gb on the 9000 Model 750. The HP Series 6000 Models 420F, 420R, 670F, 670R, 1350F, 1350R, 1300D F and 1300D R make up the family for the new HP 3000 900 and HP 9000 800 business systems and servers. The Series 6000 Model 670SE is $5,175, the 1350SE and 1350S, $8,175; disk upgrade kits for them are $4,875 to $7,875 and tape upgrade is $4,700, CD-ROM, $1,250, erasable optical disk, $5,400. The multi-user ones go from the 420F at $4,075 to the 1350R at $9,575. Disk upgrade kits are $4,000 to $9,300; tape, $4,800, CD-ROM, $1,400; there’s no erasable optical disk.
