hamilton@intersil.uucp (Fred Hamilton) (12/14/89)
.. Anybody out there know if the Lucas board works with the A1000 Supra harddisk controller? Finally, a short message... -- Fred Hamilton Any views, comments, or ideas expressed here Harris Semiconductor are entirely my own. Even good ones. Santa Clara, CA
douglee@becker.UUCP (Doug Lee) (12/17/89)
In article <360@intersil.uucp> hamilton@intersil.uucp (Fred Hamilton) writes: >.. > >Anybody out there know if the Lucas board works with the A1000 Supra >harddisk controller? Yes and no. I have one, which works semi-reliably on a Lucas/Francis combination IF I run the driver in 16 bit ram. It has occasional write errors to an Adaptec 4070 SCSI to ST506 card. This manifests itself as the card locking up and when iI cycle the adaptec's power (the documented way to recover it), I get a read/write error requestor. When I cancel it, the write continues with no loss of data. If I run the driver in 32 bit ram, I usually lose a partition after a few write attempts. I asked the Supra people about this as they were at the Toronto World of Commodore. I talked to Alan Ackerman, vice president, who informed me that there is a hardware defect on the 1000 and early 500 interfaces such that it ALWAYS does blind writes (software always thinks SCSI device is ready for more data even if it isn't). The adaptec works O.K. on a 7.16 meg 68000 system as it can keep up to the Supra software. He suggested using a faster SCSI-ST506 card and recommended an OMTI. since I already have the adaptec, I wasn't ready to embrace the idea. I purchased a 500 interface from him, which is redesigned to work properly in this regard. I have yet to get it working on the 1000, but am more than happy with their support since he offered it for a very generous price as compensation for the bug in the other one. It should work fine IF you use a fast enough SCSI device. <<<<<<DISCLAIMER>>>>> THIS IS NOT INTENDED TO BE A FLAME AS I'M SATISFIED WITH WHAT SUPRA HAS TRIED TO DO FOR ME. JUST A FACTUAL STATEMENT > >Finally, a short message... >-- >Fred Hamilton Any views, comments, or ideas expressed here >Harris Semiconductor are entirely my own. Even good ones. >Santa Clara, CA -- Doug Lee douglee@becker 416-461-5357