shah1@cbnewsh.ATT.COM (shah.jahan) (01/10/90)
During the christmas season, I got a Xetec Fasttrak controller, a Quantum 80S drive, and a Xetec memory card for our Amiga 500. The memory card plugs into a host adapter which plugs into the bus expansion to the left of the A500. The host adapter passes the bus. The memory card can use 256x8, 256x9, 1Megx8, 1Megx9 chips or 4Megx8, 4Megx9 simms. With 4 meg simms you can have up to 8 meg on the board. Right now I have 4 meg on the board using 1Megx9 simms (stolen from my 386 clone). The installation of the harddisk and the memory card was simple. The harddisk performance is very good: 500K reads and 300K writes using a 64K buffer (dperf2 measure). The harddisk is contained in a separate box with its own power supply and a noisy fan. My monitor sits on top of the harddisk box so real estate is not a problem. You can autoboot with 1.3 ROM and quick boot with 1.2 ROM. I do not have 1.3 ROM and I am happy with quick boot. I am waiting for 1.4 for my ROM upgrade. Xetec's technical support is very good. I did not call them for installation help but I called twice to ask general questions and they were very helpful. The documentation is adequate. I think all harddisk vendors should include some literature about installation of popular software to their device, making of drawer and tool icons etc. and that was missing. I have installed my often used software in the harddisk: Word Perfect, Falcon, Deluxe Paint III, Indy-Adventure Game, ATALK, etc. without any problems but have not been able to install Test Drive II yet and that is my inability to correctly interpret the software docs. I bought my controller and memory card from Abel Supply and I had to wait more than a month. Their prices are good and worth the wait. Choose a different vendor if you can not, wait calling them too many times is fruitless. I provided my own Quantum 80S drive bought elsewhere for about $600. Now with 81Meg of on-line storage and 5 meg of RAM our A500 is ready. May be my first use of memory would be large disk buffers and video applications. This review is not written for experts but for Amiga novices who are in the market for a A500 harddisk and memory expansion. I did not like the GVP Impact 500 because it is too pricy and they do not sell it without the harddisk. I considered the Supra 500 set up too slow. The A590 was too limited and high priced. If you want to know more please send e-mail Shah Jahan AT&T Bell Labs Holmdel, NJ Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are mine and do not reflect the official AT&T Bell Labs position on this matter.