rleyden@pnet02.cts.com (Richard Leyden) (01/16/88)
I've had my Wedge card install with a Miniscribe 3650 , 40 Mbyte hard
disk, for a week now and its performance has exceeded my expectations. The
speed of response is ,subjectively, as fast as any I've seen for the Amiga.
I had feared the worst as far as reliability and visits to the Guru, however
so far there have been no problems due to the drive. The drive does not
autoconfigure so it must be mounted with a command in the startup-sequence.
This hasn't been a burden because even with mounting two drive partions and
assigns to the hard disk, my startup sequence is about 4 times faster than
before
The prices I paid for the system are as follows:
Wedge card & software $163 US (incl. shipping)
Miniscribe 3650 kit (Data Storage Marketing,
Boulder, CO)
(includes WD card and cables) $359
IBM PC 150 W power supply $50
IBM PC case $35
____
total $607
The price/inconvenience trade-off for the Wedge system worked out very
favorably for me since I had been planning something along this line for
about a year and a half. I had previously purchased the power supply and
case for two 5 1/4 floppies. I got a 80 track 5 1/4 floppy drive for $35
from BG Micro and a 40 track drive was given to be by a friend. I'm using
the floppy interface card from Stacar Int., $35. I've stuck the Amiga
external
3.5 " floppy <still in its plastic case) so it peeks out the hole where the
IBM speaker would normally go. It's an awesome sight. And admittedly takes
up lots of room.
I still have one problem which I haven't yet resolved. Before Getting the
Wedge
card I had a home brew 1 Meg memory board (Fellinger's Design) stuck on the
expansion port. Since this board is wire wrapped, there's no big deal
about changing the connector. The Wedge board doesn't pass the bus but
there are a number of ways I could attach the wires to the memory board.
Alternatively I could wire on a 86 pin card edge (is this sold?) to the wire
wrap board. Either way it wouldn't be a buffered connection. I have a few
74HC244's left over. Could these be used to buffer the bus?
Rich Leyden
Topanga Canyon, CA
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