srinivas@qt.UUCP (03/26/87)
I just went to Byte by Byte and played with their new PAL Jr. expansion system for a while. I thought people on the net will be interested in knowing about this product. A summary follows. But before that, I need to emphasize that I do not represent Byte by Byte and this is not a sales pitch for them. Infact I don't even own a PAL Jr.( I wish they give me one free for this summary) If you have seen ads for this with a box sitting next to the Amiga, you need to forget that first. This is a completely redesigned box and sits on top of the Amiga. The PAL Jr has the following things in the box: 1. Two Zorro expansion slots, one of which is used by the DMA controller and the other is used for expansion. 2. One Meg. of fast RAM configured to be addressed in the C00000 range. 3. 20 Meg hard disk with DMA controller 4. A Battery backed clock. 5. Power supply with a fan. Technical specs of hard disk (20 Meg): ------------------------------------- Average access time: 68 msec. Track to track access time: 15 msec DMA controller data transfer rate: 10MBit/sec Scope for expansion: ------------------- RAM can be expanded to 8 Meg. But right now they have only two Meg cards available. 20 Meg HD can be replaced by a 43 Meg HD. They said that they are working on a SCCI option which the user can install in this box. Other specs: ------------ The box sits on top of the Amiga. It is about 2.75 inches tall. It is the same color as the Amiga. Contains a 120/220 VAC, 90W, 60/50Hz power supply. What did I do in the demo? ------------------------- The machine had a 20 M HD and 3 M RAM (i.e., 1 M standard + 2 M card ). I had a couple of technical guys to answer my questions. 1. One of my prime concerns was the speed of the HD. I am not too comfortable with the numbers like access time etc... So I loaded a few programs they had. First, I loaded the programs from the floppy and clocked them. Then I did the same from the HD. All of them had a speed up of about 5 to 6 times. For example, the juggler demo took 25.6 seconds to load from the floppy. It took about 4.3 seconds from the HD. I don't know how fast the other HD's are, but I am happy with the speed of this HD. (I would like to see some numbers from other HD owners on the net.) 2. I asked them if the old Amigas with slower PALs have any problem with the expansion box. They said that they have not had any problems SO FAR. (keep in mind that they have not sold any of these boxes SO FAR). 3. They don't use the regular DRAMs in this box. They use SIMM technology RAMs (I don't know what SIMM stands for). They said using these RAMs saves space and power. I asked them how much the chips cost. Both of them didn't know. But they said that the chips cost more than the regular DRAMs. If you need to expand the memory to 8 M you have to replace the 256K chips with 1M chips and I wonder if cost would be too high. 4. I saw the interior of the box. I didn't see any clumsy work. 5. And finally, it costs $1495 and they are shipping their first bunch next Monday. Hope this info is of use to some of you. -srini... srinivas@qt.utexas.edu
mark@unisec.UUCP (03/26/87)
Thanks for sharing your impressions of the Pal Jr. I received literature from the company a few weeks ago and am pretty well decided that this is the box I'm looking for. The fact that disk, memory and clock/calendar are all neatly wrapped into a reasonably trim package is quite appealing to me. Have you (has anyone) heard anything about the release of this product to other sources? Go Amigo! has had this thing listed for a couple of months (or more) now, but they don't have any (I hate that!). Are distributors likely to be offering a lower price than the $1495 quoted? Before anyone jumps on me, I realize that's not a bad price, but $1295 would sure sound a lot better. More importantly, does anyone out there have any bad words (substantiated, please) about the product or the company? I wouldn't mind hearing objective replies from competing vendors. I need it bad... 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 |
srinivas@ut-sally.UUCP (03/27/87)
In article <445@unisec.USI.COM> mark@unisec.USI.COM (Mark Rinfret) writes: >..... >Have you (has anyone) heard anything about the release of this product to >other sources? Go Amigo! has had this thing listed for a couple of months >(or more) now, but they don't have any (I hate that!). Are distributors >likely to be offering a lower price than the $1495 quoted? ....... >..... >Mark They said that all orders have to be filled directly by Byte by Byte. -srini....