[comp.sys.amiga] 2090A.. what a bummer.

stan@teroach.phx.mcd.mot.com (Stan Fisher) (06/09/89)

YO Commodore, are you listening?? RSVP? 

  I've just switched over to a nice fast (16ms) 158Mb SCSI drive on my
2090a. Really screams (diskperfs max on reads of over 720k/sec.)
  Couple of problems though, like the Seagates (though not quite as bad)
the drive takes about a 1/2 second too long to initialize/spin up and the
2090a times out and wants a Workbench floppy inserted.  This naturally 
requires me to reboot (soft) and all comes up fine.  
  Also, now that I'll be needing to back up much more data, a streamer
would be REAL nice, right?  Not on the 2090's though, I'm told it can't 
never happen.
  Also, I moved the little LED wires over to the pair of stake pins for
SCSI LED on the 2090a, and it just barely lights the thing, is that normal?

  I understand (have been told) that CBM is going to do a 2091 half card
that fixes all the sh*ty things wrong or missing with the 2090's.  So here
comes the point of all this rambling....

**Medium Heat FLAME ON***

Is CBM going to have firmware/PAL/driver changes for the 2090a that'll make
it work right?  It would seem REAL feasable to fix some of this crap on the
2090a!  I'm gonna be real pissed if I have to do Yet ANOTHER controller
upgrade just to get the things that should have been on the first 2090s!
I already dumped my 2090 for a 2090A, will I have to do that again?
How hard can it be to get the 2090A to wait longer for a READY from the
damn drive?? boot from FFS?? support SCSI tape?? eliminate DMA contention
in 16 color highres overscan??  

**Flame to simmer**

I know what some would say...  "buy a hardframe".  Not a bad idea.. that
fixes all but the streamer support, at least for now, and Microbotics says
that'll be addressed "in the future".


  Stan Fisher - stan@teroach.phx.mcd.mot.com - asuvax!mcdphx!teroach!stan
  Motorola Microcomputer Division, Tempe, Arizona -        (602) 438-3228

deraadt@enme3.ucalgary.ca (Theo Deraadt) (06/10/89)

In article <11041@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com> stan@teroach.phx.mcd.mot.com (Stan Fisher) writes:
>  Also, now that I'll be needing to back up much more data, a streamer
>would be REAL nice, right?  Not on the 2090's though, I'm told it can't 
>never happen.
 ^^^^^ ever (sp)

From looking at the 1.3 manuals, and mention of scsi.device, it seems
that C-A is going to support talking to any device on the scsi bus if
you know it's id#. In exactly that way, it would be easy to hook up a
scsi QIC tape drive and backup onto it, if the software was there, right?

I would not be so quick to say never. At least the scsi part of the 2090
is well documented.
 <tdr.
Theo de Raadt              CPSC student              Calgary, Alberta, Canada
(403) 289-5894

stan@teroach.UUCP (Stan Fisher) (06/20/89)

In article <1498@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>deraadt@enme3.UUCP (Theo Deraadt) writes:
>In article<11041@mcdphx.phx.mcd.mot.com>stan@teroach.phx.mcd.mot.com (I) write:
>>  Also, now that I'll be needing to back up much more data, a streamer
>>would be REAL nice, right?  Not on the 2090's though, I'm told it can't 
>>never happen.
> ^^^^^ ever (sp)

  Just looked up 'never' in Webster's.. and... yup, I spelled it right. 8^)
whatta ya call this?...  poetic license??  Yeah, that's it. ;^}

>
>From looking at the 1.3 manuals, and mention of scsi.device, it seems
>that C-A is going to support talking to any device on the scsi bus if
>you know it's id#. In exactly that way, it would be easy to hook up a
>scsi QIC tape drive and backup onto it, if the software was there, right?
>
>I would not be so quick to say never. At least the scsi part of the 2090
>is well documented.
> <tdr.
>Theo de Raadt              CPSC student              Calgary, Alberta, Canada
>(403) 289-5894

Sorry, but if you'd look again, you'd see that I was "TOLD it can't never
happen.".  That's different than making the claim myself.  Commodore
customer support (and I'm useing the term 'support' VERY loosely) told me
this when I questioned them on the use of scsi direct stuff i.e. tape on
the 2090(a).  They said it would however be supported on a new card called
the 2090b OR the 2091 (depends on which day you call them), a half slot
scsi/st506 card redesign of the 2090.  BTW, where in which 1.3 manuals did
you find scsi.device references?? 


  Stan Fisher - stan@teroach.phx.mcd.mot.com - asuvax!mcdphx!teroach!stan
  Motorola Microcomputer Division, Tempe, Arizona -        (602) 438-3228

dak@ut-emx.UUCP (Donald A Kassebaum) (06/20/89)

	At Devcon, I asked about scsi direct support.  It is currently in
	the scsi driver for the new controller and someone is adding the
	scsi direct support for the 2090/2090a scsi driver.  The only
	question is when.  I think you will see it in v1.4.  Remember
	that it is software changes, not hardware changes to support
	scsi direct.

	Dak