AXDRW%ALASKA.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Mouseslayer by trade) (10/12/88)
Well, with egar shacking hands I unpacked my shiny new 2090A and seagate
ST277N yesterday. And am happy to say that the installation procedure
went flawlessly. I now have a REAL computer, it even does fast directorys.:-)
However all is not bright on the horizon, on the 2090A addendum it states
the following:
"You cannot autoboot with a Seagate SCSI hard drive and an A2090A Controller
Card because of the long initialization process in the Seagate power-up
sequence."
I wish that I had known this before I purchased my ST277N (which by the
way I got for $441.00 from Hard Drives International).
What I am hoping is that "power-up sequence" means you can't boot on power
up, but after the drive has finished it's power on sequence, you can reboot
and then boot. I can't check yet, because I didn't get the 1.3 Roms I
ordered from CATS.
A side note, I don't know is this stuff is actually available to the general
public, I ordered it via the CATS developer program.
Don
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Don R Withey BITNET: AXDRW@ALASKA.BITNET
University of Alaska BIX: dwithey
3211 U.A.A. Drive
Anchorage, Alaska 99508
907-786-4851 (work) 907-277-9063 (home) 907-274-6378 (other home)
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Any expressed opinion is my own and in no way represent those of my employer,
the University of Alaska.mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) (10/13/88)
> *Excerpts from ext.nn.comp.sys.amiga: 12-Oct-88 2090A + ST277N Mouseslayer* > *by trade@cun (1437)* > However all is not bright on the horizon, on the 2090A addendum it states > the following: > "You cannot autoboot with a Seagate SCSI hard drive and an A2090A Controller > Card because of the long initialization process in the Seagate power-up > sequence." Is this a problem specific to the A2090A controller, or will all SCSI controllers have this problem with a Segate drive? On a related note...does anybody have good things to say about the Pacific Peripherals Overdrive? It seems to be the least expensive DMA SCSI controller of the bunch, and I would like to know how well it compares with the GVP Impact and A2090A. --M Michael Portuesi / Information Technology Center / Carnegie Mellon University ARPA/UUCP: mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu BITNET: rainwalker@drycas "my friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair"
joe@cbmvax.UUCP (Joe O'Hara) (10/13/88)
In article <4783@louie.udel.EDU> AXDRW%ALASKA.BITNET@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Mouseslayer by trade) writes: >Well, with egar shacking hands I unpacked my shiny new 2090A and seagate >ST277N yesterday. And am happy to say that the installation procedure >went flawlessly. I now have a REAL computer, it even does fast directorys.:-) >However all is not bright on the horizon, on the 2090A addendum it states >the following: >"You cannot autoboot with a Seagate SCSI hard drive and an A2090A Controller >Card because of the long initialization process in the Seagate power-up >sequence." >What I am hoping is that "power-up sequence" means you can't boot on power >up, but after the drive has finished it's power on sequence, you can reboot >and then boot. I can't check yet, because I didn't get the 1.3 Roms I >ordered from CATS. The autoboot problem with Seagate SCSI drives refers to power-up, as the statement reads. Warm boots will work. -- ======================================================================== Joe O'Hara || Comments represent my own opinions, Commodore Electronics Ltd || not my employers. Any similarity to Software QA || to any other opinions, living or dead, || is purely coincidental. ========================================================================
dale@boing.UUCP (Dale Luck) (10/16/88)
In article <> mp1u+@andrew.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes: >On a related note...does anybody have good things to say about the Pacific >Peripherals Overdrive? It seems to be the least expensive DMA SCSI controller >of the bunch, and I would like to know how well it compares with the GVP Impact >and A2090A. > I can relate some experiences. about 2 months ago I needed to hook up a maxtor 3380 scsi drive. These drive are being blown out right now while maxtor gears up with some faster hardware. The drive I have is a 300mbyte formated, 27 msec ave access time. I tried several controllers. The first one I had access to was the 2090a of course, it would not work. The prep would come back ok but when I rebooted, the first partition was not in the mountlist. I tried several combinations of sectors,heads, etc to no avail. So I went to HT Electronics in Sunnyvale, ready to buy the best board they had that would work with the maxtor. I knew they had GVP boards there and I had heard good things about it as well as I knew some people at GVP. However we were unsuccessful getting that board to work. I say we because I now had a group at HT really interested in seeing this 3380 run. Thad F. had his running on some other controller attached to his a1000. I think he had a Cltd controller. But they did not have any controllers there for my 2000. We then tried the pacific peripherals card, and after picking a close enough looking drive from their drive table, it came right up. When I got home, I played with it for awhile and then decided to repartition it. and it stopped working. I went to Pacific Peripherals up in Fremont and Lee helped me right out, I think my problem is I had put the scsi connector on upside down. I was feeling dumb. Since then I've been very happy, until I went to amiexpo. The good people of Micropolis (thanks Gayle) loaned me a couple of drives for my X system that I was going to be demonstrating. These were 320 mbyte 5 1/4" full heights like the 3380 I had but where 18 msec ave access time instead of 27 msec. My other trouble with the maxtor 3380 was with a sun3, but that is a whole nother story. Any way, the new micropolis, fresh out of the packing material came up instantly on the sun3, and the 2nd one worked on the 2090a board, once I got the switches set right. I expect the micropolis to work fine on the pacific peripherals board as well but I have not tried it yet. I'm not really sure that board does dma since pm shows the system floored when I do lots of copies, this does not occur with the 2090a as I recall. > >"my friends say she's a dumb blonde, but they don't know she dyes her hair" hee hee -- Dale Luck Boing, Inc. {uunet!cbmvax|pyramid}|!amiga!boing!dale Although I do contract work for Amiga-LosGatos, my opinions probably don't represent those of Commodore or its management or its engineers, but I think the world would be a better place if they did.