A BYTE SHORT TAKE: Hardcard II 80
A Hardcard to Beat
 
Microbytes Daily News Service
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Plus Development's latest product underlines their reputation for
unique, technologically innovative products. The Hardcard II 80
packs 80 megabytes of data into a package that takes up a single
full-length slot in your IBM PC AT or compatible.
 
The first Hardcard (introduced in 1985) put 10 megabytes into a
like-sized package. It was followed by 20- and 40-megabyte
versions. The "II" in the latest Hardcard's name indicates some
major new features, but the card remains the same size and as
solidly built as ever. (The company claims it will survive a 100
g shock.) And it only draws 8 watts.
 
If you've ever had the "pleasure" of installing a hard-disk
drive in your computer, prepare yourself for a bit less
hair-tearing. Although the Hardcard II does have its own singular
quirks, installing it is basically a simple matter of plugging it
into a free slot and installing some software.
 
I installed my unit as an adjunct to my 386's built-in
64-megabyte main drive, so the manual told me to change a DIP
switch on the Hardcard before plugging it in. Good thing I didn't
put the cover back on, because when I booted my system it
immediately locked up. It turned out that the Hardcard I/O
address was in conflict with another peripheral in my system. The
manual gave alternative settings, and as soon as I tried one, my
system booted just fine.
 
Packing 80-megabytes into a package that's less than an inch
thick requires some technical wizardry. And since the internal
configuration of the Hardcard II is proprietary, I needed to
install a device driver before my system would recognize the
drive. Then I ran an automatic partitioning/formatting program
that prepared the Hardcard II for accepting data. (Manual options
are available, too.) After a few minutes work, my 64-megabyte
system became a 144-megabyte behemoth, with drives E, F, G, and H
added.
 
The thing I noticed first was the quiet. The Hardcard II is
absolutely silent, with none of the usual hard-drive noise even
when it's accessing data. It's fast too. Its controller uses a
1:1 interleave and has its own 64K byte hardware cache. Byte
benchmarks showed an average access time of 28 ms, just a bit
higher than the 25 that Plus claims. Of course, the caching
reduces the effective access to the sub-20 ms. range.
 
It's also possible to install the Hardcard II as the first
(booting) hard drive in a system, but that requires a bit more
work. You need to prepare a disk with a version of DOS that the
Hardcard's installation program has patched. And for those who
are into connectivity, the Hardcard also comes with drivers for
Novell, 3Com, and IBM LANs.
 
It also comes with a driver for OS/2, but that was a large
disappointment. At the time I wrote this, the Hardcard II's OS/2
driver wasn't compatible with OS/2 version 1.2. Unfortunately,
this -- at least at present -- precludes using the Hardcard with
1.2's HPFS (High Performance File System) which dramatically
improves hard disk performance. A Plus spokesperson told me that
the company is "presently evaluating" OS/2 1.2.
 
Plus Development has also become more pragmatic. It used to be
that Hardcards came at a substantial premium over standard
drives. At $999, it's still more expensive than a comparable
capacity full-sized hard drive, but only marginally. And the
convenience and quality of the Hardcard II make it worth the
price of admission. (A 40-megabyte version is also available, but
it's only $150 less.)
 
The Facts:
Hardcard II 80, $999.
Hardcard II 40, $849.
 
Requirements:
IBM AT or compatible and DOS 3.0 or above
 
Plus Development Corp.
1778 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, CA 95035
(408) 434-6900
 
 
                              --- Stan Miastkowski
 
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