[net.micro.amiga] Sidecar rumors, can anyone confirm?

dave@uwmcsd1.UUCP (Dave Rasmussen) (09/16/86)

I downloaded the following from fidonet amiga echomail. Anyone (CBM?)
care to comment on it?

----------------
SUBJ: SIDECAR HARDDISKS

THE LATEST NEWS ON THE SIDECAR MAKES EVEN THE MARCH DATE SEEM OPTIMISTIC, I'M 
AFRAID. ON ONE OF THE LOCAL BBSES I READ A FILE THAT SEEMS TO BE A TRANSCRIPT 
OF A CONFERENCE ON PEOPLELINK, FEATURING JEFF PORTER OF CBM. ACCORDING TO MR. 
PORTER, THE SIDECAR BADLY FAILED THE FCC TESTS. SO BADLY, IN FACT, THAT IT 
WILL NEED TO BE RE-DESIGNED. ALSO, THE SIDECAR WILL NO LONGER HAVE ANY 
PROVISION FOR 2 M OF AMIGA MEMORY
-- EVIDENTLY, ALL YOU WILL GET WILL BE THE PC CLONE CAPABILITY.
-)Read-Orig. +)Read-Reply Q)uit 
---------------

Personally I feel the sidecar could fit my limited needs rather nicely.
Granted I could stick 2 megs in a zorro slot, and a disk controller in a pc
slot. Get something like a 30 meg drive from a bargain basement and partition
no more than 5 meg of it to the pc. Hey, that would make my amiga much more
livable, plus pc compatibility, for less than most other vaporware.

Aside from the sidecar article, someone mentioned CBM was working with
Xebec on a 20 meg subsystem for $~600.

Can anyone confirm or deny any of this?

-- 
The views above are those of my keyboard, not my organization.
Dave Rasmussen c/o Computing Services Division @ U of WI - Milwaukee
INTERNET: uwmcsd1!dave@rsch.wisc.edu UUCP: ihnp4!uwmcsd1!dave

bj@well.UUCP (Jim Becker) (09/18/86)

The SIDECAR did fail FCC very badly, from what I have heard. Also, if you
are planning to use the sidecar for extra memory and a harddisk you will
probably be disappointed if you ever get the chance. The harddisk from
the sidecar will be mucho slower than using a DMA harddisk. For all those
harddisk heads check out the Byte by Byte booth in L.A. this weekend,
if you are close. You may be suprised at what you see. I am using a 
harddisk from them now and there is no alternative - floppies that
used to be fast (compared to the Mac world) are super-dogs. Once you
switch you will never quit... mark my works.

-Jim Becker
Terrapin Software
P.S. My sources are just about the best on this info... no lie.

perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) (09/18/86)

In article <1803@well.UUCP>, bj@well.UUCP (Jim Becker) writes:
> 
> harddisk heads check out the Byte by Byte booth in L.A. this weekend,
> if you are close. You may be suprised at what you see. I am using a 
> harddisk from them now and there is no alternative - floppies that
> used to be fast (compared to the Mac world) are super-dogs. Once you
> switch you will never quit... mark my works.

Yeah you might be surprised. Aren't they using the now defunct CBM/Conan
disk controller? The one with all the  hardware problems that have since
caused the manufacturer to drop the product?

I'm told that  disk  to  disk,  a  5Mbyte copy  took 15 minutes. That is
surprising. Hey, Jim. If BbB has switched to a  new controller we're all
ears. If not, and they're still showing a dead product well then....

Perry S. Kivolowitz

perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) (09/18/86)

In article <1807@well.UUCP>, perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) writes:
> In article <1803@well.UUCP>, bj@well.UUCP (Jim Becker) writes:
> > 
> > harddisk heads check out the Byte by Byte booth in L.A. this weekend,
> > if you are close. You may be suprised at what you see. I am using a 
> <stuff deleted>
> Yeah you might be surprised. Aren't they using the now defunct CBM/Conan
> disk controller? The one with all the  hardware problems that have since
> caused the manufacturer to drop the product?
> 

I posted this ealier based upon the very BEST information anyone could want.
IE the source was a person working for/with  the manufacturer. CBM has since
called me to say the my information was wrong. Therefore I retract the above
message and will wait to find  out  more from CBM before I speak on the sub-
ject of the CBM disk controller again.

Sorry for the net traffic generated.

Perry S. Kivolowitz

rokicki@navajo.STANFORD.EDU (Tomas Rokicki) (09/19/86)

> I'm told that  disk  to  disk,  a  5Mbyte copy  took 15 minutes. That is
> surprising. Hey, Jim. If BbB has switched to a  new controller we're all
> ears. If not, and they're still showing a dead product well then....
> 
> Perry S. Kivolowitz

Howdy, Perry!

	If that is under 1.1, it is surprising; surprisingly FAST.
5M in 15 minutes is 5.6K per second.  Copying a file from place to
place on a floppy will run between 400 and 450 bytes per second on
a 1.1 system due to the constant head seeks.  This is fixed under
1.2, so floppy to floppy transfers run at a much more reasonable
3.3K per second.  Let's see how that drive performs under 1.2, and
judge it then.

					-Tom