Dave@daami.van-bc.UUCP (Dave Allen) (01/22/88)
WEDGE.UPDATE
Just so that I don't get good people like Leo on my bad side I will
refrain from posting prices for the WEDGE hard drive interface for the
A1000. (The A500 version will be out RSN). What I will do, however, is
to include a couple of "consumer reports" or reviews if you like.
If you are interested in getting prices PLEASE send me your regular
postal mailing address (I am domained out) and I will send you all the
hard copy information that you want. We now have dealer prices so
those of you that had expressed an interest and have not received my
reply, please send me a note again.
THe first review comes from CI$ and is a precursor to a review that
will (may) be in the April Issue of computer shopper.
(Ted Drude is s technical reviewer for Computer Shopper Magazine)
--------------------------------
#: 103857 S11/Hardware
16-Jan-88 17:51:26
Sb: Wedge + PC Hard Drives
Fm: Ted Drude / CS Magazine 70275,1023
To: ALL
OK...here is a non-interested third party look at the latest version
of the Wedge Hard Disk Adapter. (In case you aren't familiar with it
the Wedge is an Amiga Bus to PC Bus adapter, allowing PC Bus hard disk
controllers to work with the A1000 and A500. An A2000 version is also
in the works.)
First of all...the BIG question...does it work? Answer: YES YES YES
!!! I took a Western Digital WX-1 and Fuji 3.5" 20 Meg drive out of
my Cordata PC clone, hooked it up to my A1000 via the Wedge, formatted
the drive, installed a ton of software, and ran it for over 8 hours
(two work days) with no problems at all. After using a Supra 20 Meg,
as well as a SCSI drive driven by a C-Ltd interface, for several
months, I can say that the Wedge works just as well.
Diskperfa, the standard benchmark for Amiga Hard Drives, reports
higher data throughput with the Wedge than the above mentioned SCSI
drives. Subjectively, the drive was as fast or faster than the SCSI
setups.
The only problem I've run across so far is in the low level
formatting. IF your hard drive has a hard error on one of its tracks,
you have to partition it into se in order to bypass the problem area.
Neither the software or the WX-1 controller currently supports back
track error mapping. This implies that the formatter needs a little
work. When that, and some of the other utility software is improved,
the package will really shine.
As it now stands, the Wedge is best installed by someone intimately
familiar with AmiDos (mountlist,Devsice drivers, etc.) and hard disks
(heads, cylanders, interleaves, etc.). But with a little more time
and maturity, this product has a lot of potential. It's one of the
first really neat items to come along that allow the Amiga world to
take advantage of the economic (read cheap) advantages of PC clone
softare. (and hardware). Look for more products like this soon.
------------------------
The second review comes from Wayne Oakley in Calgary Alberta.
Taken from MIND LINK on Tue Nov 24 00:41:11 1987
From: oakley@cgou01.dec.com (mooz mooz)
Subject: Low Cost Hard Drive from Canada
Date: 21 Nov 87 00:23:00 GMT
As a result of the posting of a message by Dave Allen of the
Panarama Club in Vancouver B.C. Canada about the 'Wedge' interface
into the ST-506 disk world, I took the plunge and ordered the Wedge,
Western Digital WX1 controller and a Disk Case. Thanks to the efforts
of Dave Allen et all I received the package a couple of days ago. I
quickly unpacked and put together the pieces with my pre-owned Segate
ST-412 (made for Digital Equipment as an RD51) 10Mb full height
winnie. Everything went quite smoothly on the whole, the only problem
I have discovered is that the RD51 disk requires a very high degree of
power which is pushing the supply near to the limit, which on occasion
has caused a loss of speed on the drive and a subsequent hang of the
system . But, I have been assured by several sources that the typical
half-height drives require far less power and the supply in the Disk
Case can handle two disk units comfortably.
To continue, I used the supplied FMT file to perform the low
level format of the drive and then AmigaDos to FORMAT to a DOS disk,
followed by the normal Mount DH0: and presto there was 10Mb available
to fill. So I immediately began to transfer every full 3 1/2" disk to
the wide open spaces. Everything went very smooth except when the
disk decided that it had a bad block everything would hang until
C-A-A. After the reboot and mount the first time I accessed the HD
the volume validation went into action and all was well. The file
which was being copied showed a size of zero bytes so I renamed the
file to bad.block and continued to fill the disk to 75% without
incident.
Without any experimentation in the values supplied to FMT I
would guess that the time required from unpack to completion of Dos
formatting would be about 30-45 min. (longer for larger disks - the
two formatting runs are quite long). All in all very satisfactory and
easy to do - even if you don't know what's what.
The only potential drawback at this time is that the Wedge/WX1
combination that attaches to the buss is uncovered. But in discussing
this with the board's designer I learned that this is not a permanent
problem since they just didn't want to delay release of the product
any longer and that some ideas they are kicking around for a box/case
sound very interesting (no committments of course - just great
potential), so I'm perfectly willing to use it as is for the next
little while.
The Disk Case is very clean and incorporated a master switch
for the case with 4 switched outlets on the back for those other
pieces as well as a fan. It's physical dimensions are slightly
smaller than the A1000 which means that it fits well with the A1000.
As for the driver, I have been told that the software
developers are working on a bad block replacement scheme for the
driver which will provide for block replacement when bad blocks are
discovered (sounds like a nifty idea for the Amiga), but until then I
am perfectly satisfied with just keeping some bad.block files around
to map out the bad blocks.
On the whole I believe that this offering by Dave Allen and
others is really worthwhile in that you can obtain a 20Mb hard disk
system for about $900.00CDN (approx $670.00US) which can support 2
drives of varying sizes available from a highly competitive
marketplace, which means cheaper. So while I am one of the converted,
I must say that I am very pleased so far (after 3 days) and can
recommend this to somebody considering a hard drive system and doesn't
want to spend a lot of money. Besides, it's designed, written, sold
and used by Ami people just like us.
wayne oakley
(I paid for it so the opinions are mine.)
-----------------------------
This one is from Charlie Gibbs of PaNorAmA.
I _am_ satisfied! If enough people are interested I could be
persuaded to drag my hard disk along to the next meeting. It looks a
bit kludgy but it works great. I now hate going out to floppies for
_any_ reason!
-----------------------------
The orders and enquiries are coming in as fast as "DELETE #? ALL" so
we have prepared some promotional material on hard copy. If you are
interested in inexpensive hard drives for the Amiga 1000 please let me
know.
I wish I had Leo's bike.....
--
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ Dave Allen - President of PANORAMA - Pacific Northwest Amiga Association +
+ - "I can't stop Multitasking" - Write: 9651 Alexandra Rd. +
+ // - Phone: (604) 270-0064 Richmond, B.C. Canada V6X 1C6 +
+ // or: Dave Allen UUCP: dave@daami.van-bc.UUCP +
+ \\// or: {ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!daami!dave +
+------\/---------------------------------------------------------------------+