hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) (04/27/87)
I just noticed in an IBM ad for PS/2's that they are announcing a 200Meg WORM drive (optical disk Write Once Read Many). This would be a handy thing to put on my Amiga! Anyone know 1) how much 2) what interface (SCSI I hope?) 3) whether they're shipping yet? Or other comments about hooking one up to an Amiga? Thanks, Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatcher
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (04/27/87)
In article <8704270104.AA03871@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> hatcher@INGRES.BERKELEY.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: >I just noticed in an IBM ad for PS/2's that they are announcing a 200Meg >WORM drive (optical disk Write Once Read Many). This would be a handy >thing to put on my Amiga! >Anyone know 1) how much 2) what interface (SCSI I hope?) 3) whether they're >shipping yet? Or other comments about hooking one up to an Amiga? - Availability is scheduled for 2'nd quarter, I don't believe they are available currently. Price BTW is ~$3000 for a single drive. - The drive is available with a PC/XT compatible interface card. The announcement doesn't mention SCSI, although it is a possiblity. A pretty good chance it would work with the A2088 bridge card, although the letter suggests that the card contains a BIOS mapped into a new, non-standard location. - I'd assume once the cost on these things comes down to a more reasonable level that someone will do a native mode controller. It's a great match for the Amiga video capabilities... -- 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)
crs@cpsc6b.UUCP (04/28/87)
In article <1763@cbmvax.cbmvax.cbm.UUCP>, (George Robbins) writes: > In article <8704270104.AA03871@ingres.Berkeley.EDU> (Doug Merritt) writes: > >I just noticed in an IBM ad for PS/2's that they are announcing a 200Meg > >WORM drive (optical disk Write Once Read Many)... > >Anyone know 1) how much 2) what interface (SCSI I hope?) 3) whether they're > >shipping yet? Or other comments about hooking one up to an Amiga? > > - Availability is scheduled for 2'nd quarter, I don't believe they are > available currently. Price BTW is ~$3000 for a single drive. From what I have read, the price of the drive will be about $2800, but the disks will sell for $60-75 each. > - The drive is available with a PC/XT compatible interface card. The > announcement doesn't mention SCSI, although it is a possiblity. A > pretty good chance it would work with the A2088 bridge card... It may not be that easy to make it work with the A2088. I read that the drive isn't treated as a disk drive, but rather as a networked device, due to its capacity. Could that still work? > It's a great match for the Amiga video capabilities... AMEN!!!! > -- > George Robbins Chris Seaman AT&T ..!ihnp4!cpsc6a!crs crs@cpsc6a.ATT.COM
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (04/29/87)
In article <261@cpsc6b.cpsc6a.ATT.COM> crs@cpsc6b.cpsc6a.ATT.COM (C. R. Seaman) writes: > >> - The drive is available with a PC/XT compatible interface card. The >> announcement doesn't mention SCSI, although it is a possiblity. A >> pretty good chance it would work with the A2088 bridge card... > >It may not be that easy to make it work with the A2088. I read that the >drive isn't treated as a disk drive, but rather as a networked device, >due to its capacity. Could that still work? Standard MSDOS has a partition size limit of 32MB. The card apparenly contains it's own bios that bypasses this restriction and manages to hide the WORM nature of the drive from the normal user. In this case, one would either hope to use the BIOS to advantage or bypass it entirely and let some kind of handler on the Amiga side worry about the details. It might turn out that the controller/drive interface is not that complicated or is closely realated to some standard interface. In this case you might want to design an Amiga specific interface card for it. In any case, it is not clear that this drive will take off in a big way. The idea is neat, but the cost is still quite high. Not every IBM idea takes the world by storm. When it is available, I guess we'll take a look and see... -- 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)