root@van-bc.UUCP (11/16/87)
Because of some strange foolups with Mail getting through to me I am reposting my original message on the inexpensive Hard Drive systems for the Amiga. On order that I not offend the Net.gods (and not go to Net.heaven) please note the following warning! WARNING* The following may be constued as a commercial message so depending on your rnews program take any precautions that may be necessary to avoid reading the following information that describes a REALLY GOOD DEAL. Hard Drive systems available for the AMIGA ------------------------------------------ * Shipping and handling are extra * Special for Amiga User Groups Members The WEDGE, a hard drive interface board for the AMIGA 1000 and 500. Allows you to connect up to 2 160 Megabyte IBM style hard drives. Requires Drive Controller card - suggested Western Digital WX1 There is a disk of software included which will allow you to format hard drives, mount DHx:, use the WEDGE, and Park it with very little trouble. There will be upgrades to these files available for the cost of the disk and mailing. Some of the detailed technical information is included below excerpted from Bill Hennings UseNetmessage. The WEDGE with Software; $175.00 CDN Funds User Group Price (for US prices check with your bank :-) $195.00 CDN Funds non-user group price ------------------------------------------- Package Number 1 20 Megabyte Half Height Hard Drive - MiniScribe 3638, Western Digital Controller - WX1 (will control up to 2 Hard drives) The WEDGE (as above), Half Height Case (will hold 2 Half Height Drives) with Power supply. Nicely fits under an A1000 and has a switched 4 output power conector. 824.00 User Group Price 849.00 Non User Group Price -------------------------------------------- Package Number 2 40 Megabyte Half Height Hard Drive - MiniScribe 3638, Western Digital Controller - WX1 (will control up to 2 Hard drives) The WEDGE (as above), Half Height Case (will hold 2 Half Height Drives) with Power supply. 1024.00 User Group Price 1049.00 Non User group Price -------------------------------------------- Additional Hard Drives ====================== 20 Meg (3438) without controller ------ 405.00 User Group Price 429.00 Non User Group Price ---------------------- 20 Meg (3438p) with controller (WX1) ------ 490.00 User Group Price 514.00 Non User Group Price ------------------------ 40 Meg (3650) without controller ------ 525.00 User Group Price 549.00 Non User Group Price ------------------------ 40 Meg (3650) with controller ------ 600.00 User Group Price 624.00 Non User Group Price ------------------------ Ordering Information: Cash or Money Order ONLY Made payable to Reiter Software Inc. c/o 9651 Alexandra Road, Richmond, B.C. Canada, V6X 1C6 From: Bill Henning <bhenning@bhami.vnet.van-bc.UUCP> [<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< line eater food >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>] WHILE THIS POSTING IS NOT COMMERCIAL IN NATURE (AT LEAST NOT IN MY OPINION) SOME PEOPLE MAY BE OFFENDED BY RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS REGARDING AN EARLIER POSTING ABOUT INEXPENSIVE HARD DISKS FOR THE AMIGA. NOW IS YOUR CHANCE TO HIT THE 'N' KEY... in <15397@watmath.waterloo.edu> Fred Walter writes: > What exactly is The WEDGE ? If you are going to be commercial, at least > fully describe the product. Hello. Dave Allen (the poster of the announcement) asked me to reply to your questions - and since I thought that your questions may be of general interest, I am posting my reply to comp.sys.amiga. Please feel free to re-post this message, but please note that I am not involved with Reiter Software in any position. I did not design the WEDGE - Jim Brooks did, and I have nothing to do with the marketing/sale/etc. of it. That out of the way, I did write a significant portion of the driver software, and I am an early owner of the Wedge - I point-to-point wired a prototype for my use. The WEDGE is a small printed circuit board that plugs into the 86 pin expanion socket on the side of an Amiga 500 or an Amiga 1000. [Larry Phillips of CI$ fame is trying to make an Amiga 2000 version of the WEDGE] It does not auto-configure, and must be MOUNT-ed. Into the WEDGE plugs a small backplane which has one empty PC/XT style slot, to be used for a standard PC hard disk controller. A backplane with more than one empty slot would allow more than one PC hard disk controller to be plugged in, and more hard drives to be on-line with the proper drivers. A WX1 controller can control two drives, each of which may have 1024 cylinders, 16 heads, and 64 sectors [I am typing this from memory - so excuse any silly mistakes.] Therefore, theoretically you could have two 500Mb ST506 drives with one controller. Since most people have smaller drives than the theoretical maximum, smaller drives will work :-) :-) :-) > I would presume it is a slap on the side something or other that allows you > to use IBM hard drive controllers so that one can use an inexpensive IBM > hard drive. Is this what it is ? That is entirely correct. The current driver software works with the Western Digital WX1 controller, and should work with some other controllers, if they are fully compatible to the WX1 [i.e. same registers, same DRQ handling, etc]. Some other controllers have been tried - and Jim [the guy who designed the hardware and did the initial driver] is trying to get more cards to work. But the WX1 works quite well - I am using a WX1 controller with an old full height 10Mb Tandon. Basically you need the WEDGE, a WX1 (or compatible) PC/XT controller, an ST506 hard drive, case and power supply for the drive. Dave is selling both the WEDGE and a couple of different complete packages, including 20Mb or 40Mb drives. > Does it pass the buss properly ? (IE. can I use my 2 meg slap on the side > expansion ?) The WEDGE does not pass the bus due to the possibility of overloading the bus and possible timing problems. However, if your memory expansion board passes the bus, the WEDGE may be able to work plugged into it. I have an Insider installed in my Amiga [1Mb internal] and it works fine with that. If your memory board passes the bus, then send me e-mail telling me the make & model, and I'll ask Jim to see if he can try it out - as there is a large local Amiga user's group, someone is likely to have the same model memory board as you. Ofcourse I cannot gurantee that he can find such a board here or that he can try it out, but I could certainly ask [he is currently trying a memory board/WEDGE combination out for another club member]. Since he is not on the net, if you have questions for Jim, you can send them either to me or to Dave Allen - and I'd be happy to answer further questions too, if you have more. > I presume it comes with a proper software driver ? Source would be nice > (so it can be tweaked to go faster, etc.) ? The board [or package deal] does indeed come with the proper driver. As to whether the source is to be made available, I'd have to ask Jim - but my guess is that it will not be made available [but don't quote me on that :-)] As far as tweaking it to go faster, your's truly is working on that. I have already managed to increase the speed by about 30% over the original figures. > How does one of the hard drive systems described in the previous article > compare speed-wise for program loading/saving/etc. to the other hard drives > available ? (I think a program to check this info is on one of the fish > disks .. I remember seeing a whole bunch of stats for other AMIGA hard > drives posted a while back). The program you are thinking of is DiskPerf. Currently, with my latest speed-ups at an interleave of three the driver is reading at about 34k/sec and writing at about 22k/sec, about 60 directory entries/sec [these figures are off the top of my head - the hour is late and I could not find the figures I wrote down - but they should be pretty close]. The bottleneck at this point seems to be the Amiga's file-system - the reason I say that with fair confidence is that the latest driver implements pre-fetching and a small cache [small yes, but with a 65% cache hit ratio with only 16 buffers!] and Jim has put a scope on the disk controller, and AmigaDOS is spending about 60ms between accessing the disk [as most requests are satisfied from the prefetched and/or cached data]. The much-rumoured new file-system should speed up the drive considerably. As for the ranking, as I recall the Pal-Jr. DMA drive was faster for reading by about 6k or so [If I recall, it clocks in about 40k or so per sec], but the WEDGE+WX1 controller was faster than most non-DMA drives that appeared in that Amazing Computing article. I am still trying to squeeze more performance out of the driver. > Does anybody out there have one that can give a review ? I have a prototype of it [far more primitive than the finished product - but it works!] and I have been quite satisfied with it. I have had it running for over two months without any problems, and Jim has been extremely helpful in getting my hand-wired prototype to work [and he was very kind in letting me build a prototype of his design, and trouble-shooting some wiring mistakes of mine]. It works - what can I say? My startup-sequence used to take about four minutes to crunch through, but now it finishes in about 40 seconds. My machine is far more usefull now - I do not waste a megabyte as a ram disk. It is not as fast as a DMA drive, but it is by far the cheapest method of getting a hard disk for the Amiga. When the new file-system shows up [I hope soon!] the throughput should greatly increase [I recall reading rumours on comp.sys.amiga claiming 3x-5x improvement in speed with the new file-system - but I have no way to verify such claims :-( ] The WEDGE + WX1 + hard drive is currently about 3x the speed of the floppy [but much less trashing due to the pre-fetching & caching] but the perceived speed increase is greater. I can double-click on VT100 (thanks DBW!) and it is up & running in less than two seconds [about 1.5s]. Incidentally - 10Mb is too small a drive for an Amiga [but 10Mb is a heck of a lot better than 0Mb!]. > Since the local dealer has 20 meg hard drives (I forget the make) for > around $1500(?) cdn, I would like to know more about The WEDGE. If you have any more questions, please e-mail me. I agree - current hard drive prices for the Amiga are too high [with the exception of the WEDGE 8-) ] - this is what prompted Jim to make the WEDGE. Sorry I could not provide more exact DiskPerf figures right now - if you wish I could run diskperf and re-direct the output to a file and mail it to you - I keep trying to improve the driver, so a somewhat higher speed is not out of the question [even though I am certain I am getting pretty close to the AmigaDOS limit - I know that VD0: (thanks Perry! - I sent in my $10...) gets higher rates, but VD0: does not need to do the SLOW seeks. <FLAME ON> The problem lies in the way AmigaDOS insists on seeking all over the place for things... among other problems <FLAME OFF>. Why couldn't the file-system use a nice elevator algorithm? At least the file system is robust and has lots of redundant links allowing easy recovery (thanks for DiskSalv Dave Haynie!). Anyway, I personally believe that Dave Allen & Reiter Software are offering a VERY good deal - however, owning a WEDGE and working on its software may have biased me a bit (naahh...). DISCLAIMER: I am not employed by any of: Dave Allen, Jim Brooks or Reiter Software and nothing I've said above is to be construed as the opinion of the Dave Allen or Jim Brooks or Reiter Software. [as a matter of fact, I am a currently unemployed Computer Science student] p.s. Thanks to the Amiga development folks for bringing us the Amiga family, and to the diligent folks at CATS for answering questions on the net and putting up with the periodic flaming they receive [undeservedly, in my opinion. Now as for the marketing types... 8-) ] UUCP: bhenning@bhami.vnet.van-bc.uucp | ---------------------------------------- Dave here again; Well thats it. This should answer some or all of the questions you may have. We are shipping this week and have a good number of orders to fill already. Feel free to call me at (604)270-0064 for more info. I have a 10 meg hooked up to my Amiga now and it is like having a new machine! ...but I will wait to hear the testimonials from those who will be getting theirs this week. As a number of them are not on the NET yet would anyone object if I posted their coments from our local Amiga BBS? ---< 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. + + // Richmond, B.C. Canada V6X 1C6 + + // or: Dave Allen UUCP: dave@daami.vnet.van-bc.UUCP + + \\// or: {ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision,uunet}!van-bc!daami!dave + +-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+