tom@philica.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) (09/18/89)
Hi,
is there anyone using the A590 who would like to convey his experiences ?
I am specially interested in:
a) speed of the little bugger
b) ease of use. How easy is it to add memory or other SCSI devices ?
Thanks in advance,
Tom.
--
Tom van Peer.
E-mail: tom@ica.philips.nl
brian@jtsv16.UUCP (Brian A. Jarvis) (09/19/89)
In article <118@philica.ica.philips.nl> tom@.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) writes: > >is there anyone using the A590 who would like to convey his experiences ? >I am specially interested in: > >a) speed of the little bugger > >b) ease of use. How easy is it to add memory or other SCSI devices ? > >Tom. Add to the list a few questions of my own: c) Just what kind of RAM does it take by way of expansion? SIMMs? DRAMs? And what speed of RAM? 150 ns? 100 ns? It *is* autoconfigured, right? Thanks muchly, Brian -- Brian A. Jarvis, J.T.S. Computer Systems, brian@jtsv16.jts.com, Downsview, Ontario ...jtsv16!brian Canada M3H 5T5 (416) 665-8910 History is all too frequently the study of the worst case scenario.
finkel@TAURUS.BITNET (09/24/89)
In article <1126@jtsv16.UUCP> brian@jtsv16.jts.com (Brian A. Jarvis) writes: >In article <118@philica.ica.philips.nl> tom@.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) writ >> >>is there anyone using the A590 who would like to convey his experiences ? >>I am specially interested in: >> >>a) speed of the little bugger Using the internal EPSON drive, I got only 170K/sec with 32K buffers. This EPSON drive is a SLOW XT-bus drive, and SCSI drives are much faster. >>b) ease of use. How easy is it to add memory or other SCSI devices ? Either remove the internal EPSON drive and connect the SCSI drive with a 50 pin SCSI cable, or add the SCSI drive outside the A590 box using a 25 pin SCSI cable. >> >>Tom. > >Add to the list a few questions of my own: > >c) Just what kind of RAM does it take by way of expansion? SIMMs? DRAMs? 256KBit x 4 chips. You can upgrade the unit 512Kbyte at a time, 4 chips for every 512Kbyte. > And what speed of RAM? 150 ns? 100 ns? It *is* autoconfigured, right? Yes, it is fully autoconfigured, and it autoboots as well. >Thanks muchly, > >Brian > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Udi Finkelstein | Bitnet: finkel@taurus.bitnet or finkel@math.tau.ac.il Tel Aviv University | Internet: finkel%taurus.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu Israel | UUCP: ...!psuvax1!taurus.bitnet!finkel -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) (09/27/89)
In article <1116@taurus.BITNET>, finkel@TAURUS.BITNET writes: > In article <1126@jtsv16.UUCP> brian@jtsv16.jts.com (Brian A. Jarvis) writes: > >In article <118@philica.ica.philips.nl> tom@.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) writ > >> [....] > Using the internal EPSON drive, I got only 170K/sec with 32K buffers. > > This EPSON drive is a SLOW XT-bus drive, and SCSI drives are much faster. ^^^^^^ ^^^^^ > >>b) ease of use. How easy is it to add memory or other SCSI devices ? > > Either remove the internal EPSON drive and connect the SCSI drive with > a 50 pin SCSI cable, or add the SCSI drive outside the A590 box using a > 25 pin SCSI cable. Am I to belive that the A590 from Commodore has an XT style IDE hardrive in it and not a SCSI style drive? Doesnt this sound kinda strange that they would put in a SCSI controller chip and then not use it? > >>Tom. > > > > Jeff Easton UUCP: !mailrus!sharkey!aucis!easton Zenith Data Systems OEM Engineering Oh great! There goes my bandwidth average for this month ;-) ;-)
jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) (09/29/89)
In article <509@aucis.UUCP> easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) writes: > Am I to belive that the A590 from Commodore has an XT style IDE >hardrive in it and not a SCSI style drive? Doesnt this sound kinda >strange that they would put in a SCSI controller chip and then not >use it? XT drives are cheap. Scsi drives are not as cheap. Controlling an XT drive, given the WD scsi chip and our custom gate array, is very easy. Combine these facts with the idea that the A590 is supposed to be a consumer item for A500 owners (and even with the XT drive, it sells for about what a 500 does). It does have both internal 50-pin and external 25-pin SCSI connectors, as well as sockets for 2Meg of ram. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"
filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us (Bela Lubkin) (09/30/89)
In article <8033@cbmvax.UUCP> Randell Jesup writes: >In article <509@aucis.UUCP> easton@aucis.UUCP (Jeff Easton) writes: >> Am I to belive that the A590 from Commodore has an XT style IDE >>hardrive in it and not a SCSI style drive? [...] > XT drives are cheap. Scsi drives are not as cheap. Controlling an >XT drive, given the WD scsi chip and our custom gate array, is very easy. What's not clear to me is, are you using IDE drives or ST506 in the A590? ST506 drives are often called "XT drives". IDE is a new interface that puts most of the controller on the drive and requires little more than a bus to interface to. It >sounds< like you're using IDE, but... It'd be good to know because IDE drives should eventually be considerably cheaper than comparable ST506, SCSI or ESDI drives (mainly because they're PC-specific and therefore will see disgusting economies of scale...) Bela Lubkin * * filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us CIS: 73047,1112 @ * * ...ucbvax!ucscc!gorn!filbo ^^^ REALLY slow [months] R Pentomino * Filbo @ Pyrzqxgl (408) 476-4633 & XBBS (408) 476-4945
hue@netcom.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) (09/30/89)
In article <118@philica.ica.philips.nl>, tom@philica.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) writes: > is there anyone using the A590 who would like to convey his experiences ? > I am specially interested in: I've got one and it's worked out great for me so far. Before that I tried a C. Ltd and an Expansion Technologies controller and had to return both as they were DOA. > a) speed of the little bugger It'll depend mostly on how fast your drive is. I have a CDC Wren III (SCSI) disk hooked up to it and it's way faster than the 20MB PC drive that's built into it. (sorry, I don't have diskperf) BTW, this is one of those $695 Wren III's (148MB formatted) I got from some computer liquidators in Sunnyvale, CA. > b) ease of use. How easy is it to add memory or other SCSI devices ? To add memory you have to take it apart, but the installation is straightforward. Adding my Wren was truly a joy. The A590 comes some very easy to use software. To add another disk drive you run a program called "HDToolbox". The first thing it does is go out and look at all the devices on the SCSI bus (plus other PC disks). It reported my Wren at ID 2, but reported its type as "unknown", so I had to click on the "Change Drive Type" button, which brought up a new window. Since the Wren III wasn't a drive type known to it, I clicked on "Read Configuration from Drive". The Wren can report it's name, manufacturer, revision, and capacity through the SCSI Inquire and Mode Sense commands, so HDToolbox was able to fill in all the information for me. From there all you have to do is click two "OK" boxes, click on "Low Level Format" (probably not necessary as the Wren had been formatted already), click "Save Changes to Drive", click "Exit", and then do an AmigaDOS format (I did it from the Workbench menu). So that's a total of about fifteen mouse clicks and zero keystrokes to add another SCSI disk. I didn't even need to know anything about the drive, HDToolbox is smart enough to find out everything it needs to know from the disk. The A590 comes with all the normal files on a Workbench disk plus the hard disk tools already installed, so you can just plug it in and boot from it. -Jonathan
jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) (10/01/89)
In article <43.filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us> filbo@gorn.santa-cruz.ca.us (Bela Lubkin) writes: >In article <8033@cbmvax.UUCP> Randell Jesup writes: >> XT drives are cheap. Scsi drives are not as cheap. Controlling an >>XT drive, given the WD scsi chip and our custom gate array, is very easy. >What's not clear to me is, are you using IDE drives or ST506 in the A590? >ST506 drives are often called "XT drives". IDE is a new interface that puts >most of the controller on the drive and requires little more than a bus to >interface to. It >sounds< like you're using IDE, but... Well, I think what we call "XT" drives are "IDE" (I was told there were XT-Bus and AT-Bus interface drives - A590 uses XT-Bus drives internally.) What do I know, I'm a software guy. :-) >It'd be good to know because IDE drives should eventually be considerably >cheaper than comparable ST506, SCSI or ESDI drives (mainly because they're >PC-specific and therefore will see disgusting economies of scale...) Probably. They're already cheaper than SCSI drives by a fair amount (less electronics/chips/software/etc for the menufacturer). However, SCSI drives are coming down quite a bit. BTW: for the person who liked HDToolBox so much: Thanks. It could be better (and will be next rev), but it's a light-year better than the 2090 prep program (IMNSHO - In My Not So Humble Opinion). :-) -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"
hue@netcom.UUCP (Jonathan Hue) (10/01/89)
In article <2593@netcom.UUCP>, hue@netcom.UUCP I write: > In article <118@philica.ica.philips.nl>, tom@philica.ica.philips.nl (Tom van Peer) writes: > > a) speed of the little bugger > > ... (sorry, I don't have diskperf) Got it today. Here are the numbers, first the built in 20MB drive, followed by the CDC Wren III. HDToolbox says the 20MB drive is a Western Digital 93028 (thought they only made chips). My 500 is stock, 7.16MHz 68000. File create/delete: create 10 files/sec, delete 19 files/sec Directory scan: 98 entries/sec Seek/read test: 72 seek/reads per second r/w speed: buf 512 bytes, rd 26512 byte/sec, wr 23903 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 4096 bytes, rd 106095 byte/sec, wr 70295 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 8192 bytes, rd 134146 byte/sec, wr 80453 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 32768 bytes, rd 166882 byte/sec, wr 86302 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 131072 bytes, rd 170500 byte/sec, wr 110765 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 524288 bytes, rd 170500 byte/sec, wr 115864 byte/sec File create/delete: create 14 files/sec, delete 34 files/sec Directory scan: 104 entries/sec Seek/read test: 57 seek/reads per second r/w speed: buf 512 bytes, rd 29774 byte/sec, wr 28926 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 4096 bytes, rd 196608 byte/sec, wr 136178 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 8192 bytes, rd 306900 byte/sec, wr 174762 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 32768 bytes, rd 499321 byte/sec, wr 296766 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 131072 bytes, rd 635500 byte/sec, wr 349525 byte/sec r/w speed: buf 524288 bytes, rd 655360 byte/sec, wr 361577 byte/sec -Jonathan