Memorex Telex International NV has a new disk subsystem, the 3835, for IBM’s AS/400 and System/38 machines. It’s plug-compatible with IBM’s 9335 disk subsystem, but Memorex claims that with an average seek time of 16mS, and track to track seek of 4mS, it’s 2mS faster than the 9335. Using 8 drives, the subsystem comprises a 3829 rack unit housing two 3838 controllers and eight 3835 disks. The controller comes from EMC Corp’s European base in Cork, Ireland, and the entire subsystem is assembled in the Irish plant, using Sabre 5 head-disk assemblies from Imprimis Technology, now part of Seagate Technology Inc. Each disk has 855.8Mb capacity which means that the rack capacity is 6.8Gb, double that of the 9335, according to Memorex. The dual processors handle host disk access requests and disk read-write operations, and both processors have access to a 64Kb split dedicated buffer. Other features include a thin film read and write head and host-independent diagnostics to alert users to imminent failures. Cost depends on configuration, but the rack is UKP2,359, the controller is UKP4,520, and the disk subsystem is UKP13,864.
