louie@sayshell.umd.edu.UUCP (04/17/87)
References: There seems to be more and more SCSI compatible disk systems being released of late. One of the wonderfull things about SCSI systems is that you can hang multiple controllers on the SCSI bus. Things like disk controllers, tape controllers, ethernet controllers, etc. The question is: just how useful is a vendors SCSI controller if he doesn't document a software interface to the SCSI host adaptor. Hopefully, there are two seperate drivers for such products; the driver to talk to the SCSI host adaptor and a higher level disk device driver that call upon the SCSI driver to talk to the SCSI bus. It there a standard for the interface to the SCSI driver? Now that Commodore is jumping into the arena with their SCSI/disk product, maybe they can provide guidence in this area. Maybe ASDG has some ideas? The usefullness of the SCSI bus is pretty much eliminated if you can't talk to any of the (other) devices on it. I'd sure like to be able to write my own tape backup software or an ethernet driver. Especially if I can write it once, and know that it'll work with all of the SCSI host adaptors that are/will be available. Louis A. Mamakos WA3YMH Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming
eric@amc.UUCP (Eric McRae) (04/17/87)
In article <1548@umd5.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: >..... One of the wonderfull things about SCSI systems is that you can >hang multiple controllers on the SCSI bus. Things like disk controllers, >tape controllers, ethernet controllers, etc. > >... Hopefully, there are >two seperate drivers for such products; the driver to talk to the SCSI host >adaptor and a higher level disk device driver that call upon the SCSI driver >to talk to the SCSI bus. > >It there a standard for the interface to the SCSI driver? > >The usefullness of the SCSI bus is pretty much eliminated if you can't talk >to any of the (other) devices on it. ... I agree. My company markets a SCSI interface for our emulators that really screams. We have no problems running on machines with general purpose SCSI drivers but those are few. I sit in front of a beautiful Sun 3/50 with a SCSI port that we can't use because the only access they provide is through their disk driver. If you're writing a SCSI driver for anything, design it for the general case and provide that interface. There is very little overhead in doing so and you'll have more industry support for your product in the long run. Eric McRae Engineering Fellow, Applied Microsystems Corporation USENET: ..uw-beaver!tikal!amc!eric (Ignore path info above) ATT: (206) 882-2000 USNAIL: PO Box 97002 Redmond, WA 98073-9702 MISSILES: 122 8 27 W / 47 39 14 N
perry@sfsup.UUCP (P.S.Kivolowitz) (04/21/87)
In article <1548@umd5.umd.edu>, louie@sayshell.umd.edu.UUCP writes: > The question is: just how useful is a vendors SCSI controller if he doesn't > document a software interface to the SCSI host adaptor. Hopefully, there are > two seperate drivers for such products; the driver to talk to the SCSI host > adaptor and a higher level disk device driver that call upon the SCSI driver > to talk to the SCSI bus. > > It there a standard for the interface to the SCSI driver? Now that Commodore > is jumping into the arena with their SCSI/disk product, maybe they can provide > guidence in this area. Maybe ASDG has some ideas? > By design, the ASDG disk processor will be partitioned as you suugest. There will be some DOS compatible hooks for AmigaDOS to get access to file systems out on the drives as well as a complete lower layer which talks high level commands to and from the controller. (Remember that the ASDG Smart Disk Processor (SDP) is a computer in its own right every bit as powerful as the Amiga itself. We would be remiss if we did not allow users to capitalize upon this.) Perry S. Kivolowitz
hah@omepd.UUCP (04/23/87)
[] > >(Remember that the ASDG Smart Disk Processor (SDP) is a computer in its own >right every bit as powerful as the Amiga itself. We would be remiss if we >did not allow users to capitalize upon this.) > >Perry S. Kivolowitz Perry, would you please fully describe ASDG's SDP, and when we can expect to see it on our dealers shelves and at what price. Thanks in advance Hans
page@ulowell.UUCP (04/23/87)
Ad from Perry, then: hah@isum.UUCP (Hans Hansen) wrote: >Perry, would you please fully describe ASDG's SDP, and when we can >expect to see it on our dealers shelves and at what price. Please do it via E-Mail. Don't make the world network pay for your advertising. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}
hatcher@ingres.berkeley.EDU (Doug Merritt) (04/24/87)
Bob Page just requested that Perry not post info about ASDG's upcoming hard drive. I disagree; this just came up in a local seminar group, too, and I quoted from the mod.announce.newusers group...the bottom line is that while advertising is frowned upon, simple announcements of products (or in this case answering direct questions about them) are ok, so long as it is not repetitious. At one extreme we have people who would prefer not to ever even hear that there are commercial products and services in the world; at the other are people who are very interested. The net has a real variety of people on it, and you can't expect everybody to see things your way. All you can ask for is moderation. I know that some people have been griping about Perry's "advertising" for some time, but since not everyone agrees that he has been inappropriate in the past, I would not consider it a settled question by any means. Live and let live. Personally I am very interested in hearing about any and all new products for the Amiga, and hard disks in particular, since I am in the market for one and have heard a lot of very bad reports about every single product currently on the market (for example, Byte by Byte is rumored to have production problems that make their stuff practically unavailable). Just for the record, I consider lack of DMA to be a very bad report. So please let us know about the ASDG hard drive, and anything else that's new, too. Thanks, Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatcher
perry@sfsup.UUCP (04/24/87)
In article <592@omepd>, hah@omepd.UUCP writes: > Perry, would you please fully describe ASDG's SDP, and when we can expect to > see it on our dealers shelves and at what price. > Hans Hans, The ASDG SDP series is comprised of four boards: 1. SDP The basic (SCSI only) SDP for the A1000. 2. SDP/ST The basic (SCSI only) SDP for the A1000 with the added capability of controlling two ST506 devices as well as a full boat of SCSI devices. 3. SDPI The same as the SDP but for the A2000. 4. SDPI/ST Same as the SDP/ST but for the A2000. The term SDP means: Smart (or Satellite) Disk Processor. The controller contains its own MC68000, a custom MMU, and 512K of on-controller ram. The controller is designed to support full bandwidth transfers between the Amiga and the controller, the controller and SCSI devices, the control- ler and ST506 devices all in parallel, all without interfering with each other. The on-card processing power is used to manage the on-card ram as a large intelligent buffer cache (outside the Amiga's address space) and is used in intelligent pre-fetching and seek optimization. Knowledge of the internal structure of the AmigaDOS file system can be downloaded from the Amiga providing compatibility with current and future file system formats. Also, should a drive by partitioned to contain file systems for co-resi- dent operating systems (like Unix(tm) or MS-DOS(tm)), a facility similar to the AT&T File System Switch can be employed to download knowledge of alternate file system structures. This is the intended goal of our soft- ware development effort. The controller should be available in beta-test quanities late this summer. Please, we've already gotten hundreds of requests to be considered as a beta site, we're only sending twenty or so controllers out and these are already accounted for. We hope to begin mass distribution of the product in the fall. Note: This is not your average disk controller. This controller is closer in design philosophy to main frame disk processors than anything currently on the Amiga market. As a consequence we expect the performance of this controller to be far beyond that of any existing Amiga product. We non-the- less hope to make it available at roughly the same cost less sophisticated controllers. Thanks for your interest. Perry S. Kivolowitz ASDG Incorporated (201) 540 - 9670
ccplumb@watmath.UUCP (04/25/87)
hatcher@ingres.berkeley.EDU (Doug Merritt) says (in <8704240808.AA12505@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>): >Bob Page just requested that Perry not post info about ASDG's upcoming >hard drive. I disagree; I also enjoy Perry's postings, even if he does have some commercial interest in telling us about ASDG's products. I think `commercial use of the net' means using net bandwidth and many other people's phone bills to flog your product. Perry is telling us about what ASDG is producing (it does so much, it goes so fast, it works like this, it costs so much) more accurately and currently than someone who bought their board would in a review. He's not flogging it (It slices! It dices! And, if you order now, we'll throw in, absolutely free, a set of amazing ginsu knives! (click) It slices! It dices! And, if you order now....) in some content-free weekly posting. The most commercial use I've seen made of the net were Marilyn Dee's headhunter postings in net.jobs. Even then, what made her particularly objectionable was her write-only mailbox. Anyone who wants to make a comparison should get their asbestos suit out of the closet. -- -Colin Plumb (watmath!ccplumb) (Also, I'm just dying to know what the ASDG guys are up to! If they keep up the rate at which they're making interesting Amiga hardware, they'll be making the Amigae 3000+. :-)? or hint?) Silly quote: He's been living off his laurels for years.
mark@unisec.usi.com (Mark Rinfret) (04/25/87)
In article <8704240808.AA12505@ingres.Berkeley.EDU>, hatcher@ingres.berkeley.EDU (Doug Merritt) writes: > Bob Page just requested that Perry not post info about ASDG's upcoming > hard drive. I disagree;... Amen! I hungrily look forward to "real" information about new and existing Amiga products. I think Perry has exercised reasonable constraint in posting "just the facts". I also enjoy reading users' comments about their first-hand experiences with vendor's products. As we all know, commercial advertising tends to be grossly inadequate, often being placed too far in advance to compensate for long magazine issue lead times, the end result often being the "vaporware" syndrome. Advertising also tends not to tell "the whole story". I feel that I can usually piece that together from what's tossed about the net. Obviously, if a vendor representative were to run "weekly specials" on his product line, via the net, that could be construed as crass commercialism, but responding to netter's questions or even VOLUNTEERING information should not be frowned upon. I wish more vendors would participate and give us the product details we're looking for. > > Personally I am very interested in hearing about any and all new products > for the Amiga, and hard disks in particular, ...ditto... > > So please let us know about the ASDG hard drive, and anything else that's > new, too. > Thanks, > Doug Merritt ucbvax!ingres!hatcher Mark -- | Mark R. Rinfret, SofTech, Inc. mark@unisec.usi.com | | Guest of UniSecure Systems, Inc., Newport, RI | | UUCP: {gatech|mirror|cbosgd|uiucdcs|ihnp4}!rayssd!unisec!mark | | work: (401)-849-4174 home: (401)-846-7639 |
grr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (04/26/87)
In article <1548@umd5.umd.edu> louie@sayshell.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos) writes: >There seems to be more and more SCSI compatible disk systems being released >of late. One of the wonderfull things about SCSI systems is that you can >hang multiple controllers on the SCSI bus. Things like disk controllers, >tape controllers, ethernet controllers, etc. > >The question is: just how useful is a vendors SCSI controller if he doesn't >document a software interface to the SCSI host adaptor. Hopefully, there are >two seperate drivers for such products; the driver to talk to the SCSI host >adaptor and a higher level disk device driver that call upon the SCSI driver >to talk to the SCSI bus. Point well taken. The current SCSI interface in the A2000 is integrated with the ST506 disk controller card and the software mirrors this relation. Since we are interested in things like SCSI tape backups, lazer disks and whatnot, we will have to get this orginization strightened out before too long... -- 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)
keithe@tekgvs.UUCP (04/27/87)
In article <1214@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu> page@ulowell.cs.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) writes: >Ad from Perry, then: hah@isum.UUCP (Hans Hansen) wrote: >>Perry, would you please fully describe ASDG's SDP, and when we can >>expect to see it on our dealers shelves and at what price. > >Please do it via E-Mail. Don't make the world network pay for >your advertising. > And, Commodore - don't post stuff telling us about new releases of Workbench or information on the '500 or '2000 because this is all commercial stuff, too, you see, and shouldn't be alowed to clutter up the net. I mean, what's fair for ASDG should be fair for C-A, right. Now for those of you too obtuse to get it: I'M KIDDING!!! keith PS - Perry: maybe restricting distribution to "na" would be appropriate, especially if you can't/don't sell stuff overseas, anyway.