lyles@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (01/26/87)
I've had my Amiga for a good two years now, and I've been itching for a hard drive the whole time. My main problem is that I'm a poor college student. I have an old 10 meg hard drive(Sider) from my Apple ][+ days. This hard drive uses a SASI interface, a precursor of SCSI. My question is, can I use this hd with any of the interfaces out today? If not, what would be the best buy in hard drives on the market for the Amiga? My main purpose will probably be running a multi-user BBS with a program of my own, so a fast hard drive would be nicer. A general run-down on all hard drives would be nice as well, but I would be happy with pluses and minuses of your own hard drives(or ones of friends, etc). Another idea would be to get a SCSI port bundled with some serial ports(I'll need those for the BBS), and then getting a SCSI drive from some other origin(would I be able to buy a mac or IBM SCSI drive??) What are the prices of these port bundles? are there any bundled with a hard drive and/or extra memory??? Thank you for any replies, if anyone wants, I can post a general summery of the replies I get to the net. Wonko the Sane (you call this SANE??) Disclaimer: I am totally irresponsible. So shoot me then.
grr@cbmvax.UUCP (01/26/87)
In article <1594@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> lyles@tybalt.caltech.edu.UUCP (Lyle N. Scheer) writes: > > >I've had my Amiga for a good two years now, and I've been itching for a >hard drive the whole time. My main problem is that I'm a poor college >student. I have an old 10 meg hard drive(Sider) from my Apple ][+ days. >This hard drive uses a SASI interface, a precursor of SCSI. My question >is, can I use this hd with any of the interfaces out today? If it's a 5.25 inch drive, then your chances are pretty good, it almost has to be ST506 or ST412 compatible and shold work with any non-SCSI controller. >then getting a SCSI drive from some other origin(would I be able to buy a >mac or IBM SCSI drive??) In theory a SCSI controller should work with any drive, in practise it will depend on how generic the driver and how perverse the drive is. Best to check with the SCSI board manufacturer before buying any drives... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)
ntm1477@dsacg3.UUCP (02/02/87)
I would like to know if the Amiga can be used as a Multi-user system. If so what Equiptment do i need and What data base program can i use. Thank You. Jared A McNeal Columbus Ohio
treese@athena.mit.edu (Win Treese) (12/02/87)
Which hard disk for an Amiga 1000 would net.amiga.people recommend?
Does anyone have a Pacific Peripherals system? They're advertising a
DMA system for lower prices than most other drives. Any opinions?
Please send me mail, and I will post a summary of responses.
Thanks,
Win Treese
MIT Project Athena
Internet: treese@athena.MIT.EDU
UUCP: ...!{backbones}!mit-eddie!treesevkr@osupyr.mast.ohio-state.edu (Vidhyanath K. Rao) (05/26/88)
Sorry for the repost but I did not get any reply to the original. What are your experiences with the pacific peripherals overdrive controller and what external scsi drive would you recommend? Has anybody heard anything about the new Conner drives. A dealer (in Cincinatti, but he works out of his basement/garage/whatever) had a pamphlet that listed a 100M and a 40M drives that 'have an embedded scsi controller and used RLL encoding'. Are these actually shipping and have they been out long enough to know how reliable they are? Thanks in advance -Nath
cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis) (05/27/88)
The Connors Peripherals drives are pretty much the cadillac of the
small drives at the moment. Both the CDC and Quantum products will
probably be tough competition though. The CPS-40 is shipping now
and goes for about $550 through distributors (Qty 1), the CPS-100
was not shipping last time I checked, they were saying mid June so
you might try calling them to find out [(408) 433-3340] they were
expected to cost between $1200 and $1500 each, with the Qty 10 price
being something like $1100. Note that this is just the drive unit
and you still need cables (about $20), and the Amiga to SCSI interface.
--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis BIX: cmcmanis ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.rap@rap.ardent.com (Rob Peck) (05/10/89)
This material is extracted and paraphrased from three or more messages
that passed my way across Usenet in the past few months. Recently I
had posted a message here and on People Link asking
"For the problems that you, now a (happy?) hard disk
owner might have had installing your drive, what
information do you wish had been more clear in the
manual that you received that might have saved you
lots of time and effort?"
I received only a very small number of replies, seeming that
so many of the users here already had enough technical background to
have avoided the likely pitfalls. So I searched through the messages
I had saved and came up with this as an Appendix to the Second Edition
of the Amiga Companion. The largest problem that I have at this point
is that though the arithmetic looks pretty good in this information
and I trust the word of those whose material I'd like to use here,
I myself do not yet have a hard drive and could not check it for
accuracy.
Amiga World will be checking it... thats not what this message is
about... since I received so few responses overall, I wanted to ask
the Amiga Usenet community
"WHAT, if anything, did I leave out (of this new
Appendix) that might be important to know, that
is not, in general, in the manuals that come with
hard disk controllers?"
Specific manufacturer product recommendations are inappropriate,
but generic "help!" recommendations hints, tips etc are welcome.
Given a limited space availability in the book and VERY limited
time to add much to this, can anyone suggest additions or
corrections? I need feedback no later than May 15 to have
a shot at inserting anything new.
Many thanks in advance.
Please respond directly to me via EMAIL .... see the Reply-To above,
or for not-so-smart mailers, use the path:
...uunet!ardent!rap
Rob Peck
PS - As a side note to EDWIN, who posts the intro material monthly,
the address and phone number for "kjohn" has CHANGED and is
correct in this posting. He says that it is still OK to publish
his address and phone number and he is also still willing to help
advise folks regarding problems. I made a few minor edits in
his article; you might consider using this slightly modified
version.
*******************************************************************
New Appendix to the Amiga Companion - "For Hard Disk Users"
============================================================
This appendix contains information posted originally on Usenet, a
public access network that allows users with common interests to
correspond on various topics by using electronic mail. Unlike
bulletin board systems, there is no central repository for the
information... the machines in the system all receive and forward
electronic mail and the local system administrators decide how
much space to dedicate to that mail and how long to keep it online.
Fortunately, it was possible to save these messages for you before
they disappeared into the "ether". I hope they help answer your
hard drive questions. The information comes to you courtesy of
Larry Phillips, a SYSOP (system operator) on CompuServe, from
Ken Barry, John Mesiavech, and John Kjellman, who, like myself,
contribute to the continuing dialog (multilog?) that appears on
Usenet.
My own comments are embedded in square brackets, and the rest is
directly from the contributors (with occasional minor edits installed).
Many thanks to all of the contributors named here (and the very
many others) for giving their time to help the Amiga community.
[ A Potential Hard Disk User asks: ]
> When I get my hard disk, will it be possible to partition the
> drive so that I can have separate sections on the disk for
> AmigaDOS, MS-DOS and WangDOS?
[ Yes, most likley it is possible. The information given in this
appendix shows you how AmigaDOS partitioning happens. Depending
on the type of software you have for the other DOS operating systems
with which you'd share the disk, you'll be creating similar partitioning
tables for each of them. ]
[ You'd have two choices for handling the situtation. Choice 1 is
simply to specify, for each operating system, the exact list of
tracks (LowCyl and HighCyl) that it is entitled to use, each in
its own separate file... in other words, regarding the organization
of the disk, tell each system ONLY about its own partition.
Choice 2 (preferred) would be to tell BOTH systems about the WHOLE disk's
organization... that is, define a partition for DH0: (an AmigaDOS
partition, for example), and a partition for MS0: (and MSDOS
partition), but though the entry exists in your mountlist, simply
DO NOT MOUNT the non-AmigaDOS partition in AmigaDOS. It exists,
then, as a reminder to you NOT to change your partitioning unless
you change the corresponding entry for the other filing system.
Do the same in the other environment(s) if possible. ]
========================
[ Ken Barry asks ]:
========================
> I just got a Quantum 80-meg for my Amiga 1000,
> [...]
> the Quantum docs show that the Quantum has two zones
>on it, with different numbers of sectors/track in each zone, and I
>don't know how to write a MountList entry to accommodate this.
> I imagine I could partition the drive into two logical drives,
>with the dividing line where the number of sectors/track changes, but I
>don't want to do this. I like having one big partition, and I don't
>want to have to reload the whole drive in any case. Can anyone give me
>any hints on a MountList entry?
[ Larry Phillips responds ] :
==============================
[ (Paraphrased from Larry's original answer)...]
[ You must calculate the total number of blocks available, and
make a mountlist that has entries reflecting the total blocks
because the Amiga SCSI software treats a SCSI disk drive as
though it is just a batch of data blocks. ]
[ Lets say that your drive has a total of 100,000 sectors.
In the mountlist, the SCSI software does not care whether
you specify that the drive has 1 surface with 1 sector
per track and 100,000 tracks, or 10,000 surfaces with
10 sectors per track and 1 track.]
[ When the SCSI software uses a particular sector, it simply converts
the values you provide into a block number (which the SCSI disk
controller treats as an offset from its own physical sector
number 0). ]
[ Thus your mountlists must provide accurate, non-overlapping
information if you wish to explicitly tell the system how to
reserve part of the drive as one "partition" for one logical
device (which may run a different filing system than another
logical device on the same physical drive) and another part
of the drive for another logical device. ]
[ It is nice to be accurate regarding the actual physical configuration
of the disk. But because of the way the mountlist information
is actually used, it is possible to lie to the system to get the
job done (OK, lie is a bit strong... lets just say we're bending
the truth a little bit). ]
[ Here's a more concrete example, using the sectors-per-track numbers
that you've provided above for the Quantum drive, but, for simplicity,
lets assume that the drive is much smaller than it really is, for
example, only 10 cylinders (tracks), 10 heads and that the first
5 cylinders (LowCyl = 0, HighCyl = 4) will format to have 20
blocks per track and the second 5 cylinders (LowCyl = 5, HighCyl=9)
will format to 10 cylinders per track. And assume that you want
to partition it at the dividing line between the two. For simplicity,
we'll just talk about the partitioning entries in the mountlist and
not the complete mountlist entry. ]
The first partition is easy. We simply specify:
LowCyl = 0
HighCyl = 4
Surfaces = 10
BlocksPerTrack = 20
The second one, though it looks easy, is tricky. You might ASSUME
the mountlist for the second drive would look like this:
LowCyl = 5
HighCyl = 9
Surfaces = 10
BlocksPerTrack = 10
[ But EACH individual entry in the mountlist for a particular drive
tells AmigaDOS that "the ENTIRE DRIVE" is configured this way.
AmigaDOS treats each entry as though it tells everything it needs
to know about the drive so that it can count the sector numbers
starting at sector zero and thus will convert this second entry
to say that the partition starts at sector (block number) 501
(5 cyl * 10 heads * 10 sectors per track). ]
Note that the first partition starts at block 0 and ends at block
1000. We end up with overlapping partitions, with disastrous
consequences. In this simple (and unrealistic) case, the problems
will show up very soon, since the second partition starts at about
the root block of the first partition. Formatting the second
partition will clobber the first. Writing any files to the first
partition will likely destroy the filesystem identifier in sector 0
of the second partition.
The second partition can be done, but we have to lie to it in the mountlist:
LowCyl = 10
HighCyl = 19
Surfaces = 10
BlocksPerTrack = 10
This entry tells AmigaDOS that the entire drive has a geometry of
10 heads and 20 sectors/track. By lying to it about the starting
cylinder, we arrive at the proper starting block (the starting block
of the partition is calculated from the mountlist entry values).
Note that everything works out well, and we get all the blocks
available to us.
The main problem with this method is that it usually ends up being
a bit of a brainbender, since most drives don't have numbers that
are quite so easy to calculate.
I have seen a lot of postings recently about making 880K simulated floppies,
and a lot of postings about corrupt partitions. These problems will happen
if the mountlist entries cause an overlap.
-larry
=======================
[ A Followup message from John Mesiavech ] :
=======================
Here's the params needed for the Quantum Q280 5.25" drive.
Now, at most this'll get you 76 Meg on the drive, but the drive
(with current low-level formatters I've tried by FOUR different
companies- IVS, C.Ltd, GVP, and Pacific Peripherals- is simply
not gonna format to any more.)
[ Notice of course that this is not an "actual" mountlist unless
comments in parentheses are either replaced with the appropriate
values or removed entirely. See the default DEVS:mountlist
for the correct format for each entry, and the explanation in
the Amiga Companion's Mountlist description.]
DH0: Device = (YouNameIt.device)
Unit = (YourUnitNumber)
Flags = 0 (most commonly, anyway)
Surfaces = 6
BlocksPerTrack = 31
Reserved = 2 (IMPORTANT!)
Interleave = (your interleave, depends on controller)
LowCyl = 0
HighCyl = 823
Buffers = (whatever you commonly use, I use 9)
BufMemType = 1 (means use whatever memory's available)
#
This one WORKS for the SlowFileSystem. To use FFS add the appropriate
lines for your controller. Even on a Mac the drive formats out to
76 meg free...INFO will show 72Meg for SlowFS, 76Meg FFS.
[ Notice that John did not find it necessary to partition the drive,
though using Larry's logical approach, it could have been partitioned
if necessary. ]
John
==========================================
[ Larry answers yet another question, this time about the Old File System]:
> It's not clear from the Enhancer manual how big the Slow
> File System partition has to be. They give an example of one with
> the entire Workbench on it - why would anyone want to do that?
The requirement for an OFS partition is not universal. Some units can
boot from an FFS partition. Depends entirely on the manufacturer, and
how they did things. If yours requires the OFS partition, make it
'big enough'. The reason there is no hard and fast rule is that it
all depends on what all needs to be on the boot partition for your
setup. Leave enough room for the startup-sequence, system-configuration,
and any programs needed before you switch control to a FFS partition.
One of my boot partitions (I have three, so that I can still boot when
I remove a drive for any reason), is 88K, and has the following directory:
c (dir)
assign endcli
mount newcli
run
L (dir)
FastFileSystem
devs (dir)
hddisk.device mountlist
system-configuration
s (dir)
hdstart hdstart2
startup-sequence
libs (dir)
arp.library
I don't think the Supra uses the standard MOUNT command, so you may not need
MOUNT, devs/mountlist etc.
-larry
==============================
[Finally, John Kjellman talks about simulating a floppy drive
as one of the partitions on your hard disk. Again this entails
a bit of calculating to make it work right, but the calculations
are based on the principle that the numbers you give in the mountlist
are simply used by AmigaDOS to eventually calculate a sector number
on the drive and the SCSI controller positions the head assembly
and selects the correct sector for the correct head on the correct
surface (and never really knows WHAT was in the mountlist).
John has graciously provided his address and phone number for
direct contact. Note that John is a consultant and can help you
with your problems (for a fee, of course).]
==============================
[John's information]:
ATTENTION ALL HARD DISK USERS:
I do not know if this is common knowledge on Usenet (I never saw it
before.....), but the way that AmigaDOS uses MountList information is
misleading.
When AmigaDOS has a hard disk to use, it treats the disk as if it were a
continuous string of sectors (i.e. it ignores track information).
Normally, this is not a problem because all partion mounted on a single
disk use the same number of sectors per track. THIS IS NOT TRUE WHEN
SIMULATING A FLOPPY DISK ON A HARD DISK!!!!!
[You might want to simulate a floppy disk on your hard drive
so that you can use the Amiga 1.3 DISKCOPY program which only
does the job when it believes that the source and destination
disks are identical. That is, the number of tracks, the number
of sectors per track and the number of heads].
When mounting a simulated floppy disk, you must change the number
of heads to 2, the number of track to 80, and the number of sectors
per track to 11. This causes a problem with AmigaDOS, because it
calculates the first sector to start a partition on based on the
following formula:
(starting sector #) = (starting track #)*(# of sectors/track)*(# of sides)
This causes simulated floopy partions to start on a sector nowhere near
where you thought you told AmigaDOS to put it! Since this sounds rather
confusing, here is an example:
To make a simulated floppy starting at track 100 of an ST238 (4 heads, 610
tracks (according to C.Ltd, 615 by Seagate), 26 sectors/track)
MountList entry (in error):
DH0:
Starting Cylinder (track) = 0
Ending Cylinder = 99
Sectors per Track = 26
Number of sides (heads) = 4
HF0: (Simulated Floppy)
Starting Cylinder (track) = 100
Ending Cylinder = 179
Sectors per Track = 11
Number of sides (heads) = 2
DH1:
Starting Cylinder (track) = 180
Ending Cylinder = 609
Sectors per Track = 26
Number of sides (heads) = 4
One would think this would start on track 100. Wrong!
[ This is another of those overlapping partition examples that
you saw described earlier in this appendix ]
If you apply the formula from before you get:
starting sector number = 100 * 11 * 2 == 1760
On the ST238 this is actually on physical track:
physical track = 2200 / (26*4) = track 21.1538 (near beginning of track 21)
Yes, you would have just trashed what ever was on track 21 instead of
using track 100 as you had asked (this has bitten me MANY times, it wiped
out my main partion for 2 days during the EXPO (made me stay up all night
Friday copying disks for Saturdays get-together)).
The correct MountList entry should have been:
desired starting track = 100
desired starting physical sector = 26 * 4 * 100 = 10400
starting logical track = 10400 / (11 * 2) = 472.7 (don't want to hit physical
track 99, so use 473)
ending logical track = 473 + 80 - 1 = 552
(80 logical tracks per sector on a floopy)
ending physical sector = 552 * (11*2) / (26*4) = 116.8 (not quite into track
117, so use 116)
So our MountList entry should have looked like this [ Again using only
the partitioning information... see the mountlist entry descriptions
in the Amiga Devices chapter of the Companion for more information about
building a complete mountlist entry ]:
DH0:
Starting Cylinder (track) = 0
Ending Cylinder = 99
Sectors per Track = 26
Number of sides (heads) = 4
HF0: (Simulated Floppy)
Starting Cylinder (track) = 473
Ending Cylinder = 552
Sectors per Track = 11
Number of sides (heads) = 2
DH1:
Starting Cylinder (track) = 117
Ending Cylinder = 609
Sectors per Track = 26
Number of sides (heads) = 4
[ Just as Larry Phillips has shown early in this Appendix, each mountlist
entry seems to separately tell AmigaDOS the complete physical configuration
of the drive, but the calculations for starting cylinder, track and
number of sectors per surface are simply providing a non-overlapping
method of telling AmigaDOS which is calculated sector to assign as the
first sector within a logical partition. All of the calculations come
down to that.]
Some of you may look at this and say, "Why would I want to make my
HD look like part of it was a floppy drive?" Well, the first thing
that comes to mind is copying disks. If you have to make more than 1 copy
of a disk, you can use DISKCOPY to copy it to your HD floppy and then use
DISCOPY to copy it onto as many disks as you need (due to the incredible
speed of the HD, you save the time it would have taken to read the disk the
second, third, etc. times). This is also useful if you wish to work with a
foreign disk, just copy it to your simulated floppy. If the disk has a
virus and it tries to trash your boot dish, it can't (it's on your HD)!
I hope this proves useful, but not too confusing. Just remember, when you
are calculating the track numbers to use in the MountList, they are logical
track numbers calculated from of the current MountList entry.
KJohn
I can be reached at:
RealTime (prefered): 1(312)403-4762 (6pm to 10:30pm central time)
USmail: John Kjellman
14465 Middle Pine Creek Dr.
Orland Park, IL 60462
E-Mail: kjohn@richp1.UUCP
P.S.
I will create a program to automatically create either an entire
MountList or individual MountList entries if demand warrants it.jbh@mibte.UUCP (James Harvey) (05/14/89)
I wrote these notes and submitted them to my local User Group
newsletter. Thought I would post it here as it may help someone
and perhaps someone could point out flaws in my procedures. Feel
free to shoot holes in any of it, it worked for me.
--- Cut Here ---
Hard Drive Notes - Jim Harvey - 4/9/89
Recently I learned some things about 1.3 and the Commodore 2090 controller that
may be useful to anyone with similar equipment. More specifically, I own am
Amiga 2000 with 1.2 Kickstart, a 2090 plain, and Miniscribe 8425 ST506 type
drives.
Educational Experience 1:
I wanted to re-structure the DH0 hard drive to have a single track set aside
for parking the heads, and two Fast File System partitions. The problems began
when I tried to format the second FFS partition. Instant massive Guru. Does
this sound familier?
I won't go through all the different things I tried to get the drive correctly
formatted. It was really frustrating. What finally worked was:
1. Make a backup copy of the DEVS/MountList file.
2. Edit the MountList, remove ALL partitioning entrys. Leave only RES0.
3. Mount and PREP RES0: per the 2000 manual Appendix G. Tell PREP that the
drive is all one partition (last track is highest physical).
4. Reboot, run BindDrivers, and format the whole drive using the OLD FILE
SYSTEM.
5. Restore the MountList with all your nice FFS partition entrys.
6. Prep the drive AGAIN. This time tell prep that your first partition is as
small as you desire.
7. Now reboot, mount your partitions one at a time, and format them using the
QUICK option of the 1.3 Format command (surprise! no GURU!).
This works because there is no physical difference between a freshly formatted
FFS sector and a formatted OFS sector. A quick format only rebuilds the boot
sector, the root sector and the file bitmap. I believe you can skip steps 1-4,
simply change the MountList, and do quick formats. You really should clean off
all old data with a real format though or you will be in real trouble if you
ever have to use DiskSalv on the partition.
Educational Experience 2:
After formatting the disk you should check to see if the Fast File System was
really installed. You can tell from Workbench by clicking once on the disk
icon, then selecting INFO from the rightmost pull down menu. INFO will show
you, amoung other things, the number of bytes per block. If this is 512, you
have a Fast File partition. If there are only 488, you have the Old File
System. Note that any partitions above the first have to be mounted from CLI
before the disk icon will appear on the Workbench screen. In fact, the first
(DH0) partition and it's icon won't really get mounted until something tries to
use it. This leads to...
Educational Experience 3:
Contrary to the book, you don't have to have any Old File System partitions on
the drive at all. If the entire drive is formatted with FFS you will get a
"Not a DOS Disk" requester if you attempt to access DH0: BUT if you never
attempt to access DH0, DOS is none the wiser. Here is my boot floppy
Startup-Sequence;
FastMemFirst
SetPatch > NIL:
BindDrivers
Mount FAST1:
Assign SYS: FAST1:
Assign ... Everything else to FAST1:
NewCLI from FAST1:S/StartupI
FAST1 is an FFS partition with all the workbench and DOS files. The NewCLI
completes the transfer of control to the Hard Drive. From there three other
scripts are started with NewCLI. If I have a multitasking machine, I may as
well use multitasking to boot it quicker. DH0 is never touched and it's icon
never appears. Since DH0: is never really mounted, the disk buffers it would
have used never get allocated so I have more memory available.
Note: an autobooting 2090A controller can't do this because the FFS routines
are not in ROM (Yet). Also a MountList entry declaring FFS starting at track
two will be needed. Use some name other that DH0, mount it, and format it.
DOS apparently refuses to format the default first partition as Fast File
System.
Educational Experience 4:
I don't know if this is true for all ST506 drives on 2090 controllers, but when
the computer is re-booted with Control-Amiga-Amiga, the head stepper takes 10
seconds or so to S-L-O-W-L-Y vibrate back to track zero. Recently I picked up
a second used Miniscribe drive and stuffed it into the 2000. Now both drives
do the slow hunt for track zero which means about 20 seconds of waiting on a
re-boot.
I've found a way to eliminate this. I'll pass this along with a disclaimer:
This may ultimately harm your Hard Drive. When you Prep your drive one of the
questions asked is "Do you want the heads to automatically park after 3
seconds?". If you answer Yes, you get to pick the track it parks on. I created
a single track partition on track two and told Prep to park on it. This is as
close to track 0 as I can get as tracks 0 and 1 are reserved (RES0:). It may
be cheating but re-boots are a LOT faster.
----- Cut Here -------
--
Jim Harvey | "Ask not for whom the bell
Michigan Bell Telephone | tolls and you will only pay
29777 Telegraph | Station-to-Station rates."
Southfield, Mich. 48034 |
ulysses!gamma!mibte!jbh