fnf@mcdsun.UUCP (Fred Fish) (12/31/86)
A few weeks ago I purchased an ASDG Minirack-C with two of their 2Mb boards. I have been very happy with it and this "mini-review" is my attempt to share some of my experiences. HARDWARE -------- The Minirack-C is a quality metalwork box about 6" wide by 10" tall by 10 inches deep. Both the metalwork and paint are first class (though I would rather have a beige shade than black). Inside is a two slot card cage and a very hefty looking power supply. Each 2Mb board measures 7" high by 8.5" wide and displays a very high level of component quality and workmanship in assembly. You have to look VERY hard to see any cuts or jumpers (there are only a couple). SOFTWARE -------- The ASDG expansion comes with a recoverable ramdisk. The ram disk can be set up to use any portion of the available expansion memory, up to 8Mb. I have GURU'd my system MANY times since I have had the ram disk and have yet to have the ram disk get corrupted. Not that it isn't possible with certain failure modes, just that under normal development/test conditions it appears to be very rare. PERFORMANCE ----------- To get a feel for the performance gains possible, I ran some tests using the gadget editor on my library disk 46. I measured the amount of time necessary to completely rebuild the gadget editor from the source, using Manx 3.30E. Standard dual floppy 24:10 CLtd 20M hard disk 14:55 ASDG recoverable ramdisk 9:30 Notes: (1) For all cases, compiler temp files stored in ram: (2) For dual floppy setup, manx and workbench files in df0: and gadget editor sources on df1: (3) For CLtd case, workbench, manx, and gadget editor in hd0: (4) For ASDG case, workbench, manx, and gadget editor in vd0: I then tried Rick Spanbauer's diskperf.c program. Amiga Amiga Amiga Amiga Sun ASDG Ramdisk Floppy CLtd 3/50 vd0: ram: df1: dh0: File creations (files/sec) 18 5 <=1 7 6 File deletions (files/sec) 43 10 1 15 11 Directory scan (entries/sec) 51 5 38 50 350 Seek+read (seek+read/sec) 132 51 2 40 298 Read speed, 512 buffer (bytes/sec) 70849 201649 11014 17133 240499 Read speed, 4096 buffer (bytes/sec) 109226 655360 12024 17133 234057 Read speed, 8192 buffer (bytes/sec) 113975 873813 12080 17133 233189 Read speed, 32768 buffer (bytes/sec) 119156 873813 12136 17133 236343 Write speed, 512 buffer (bytes/sec) 46811 137970 4974 12603 215166 Write speed, 4096 buffer (bytes/sec) 63937 262144 5180 13512 182466 Write speed, 8192 buffer (bytes/sec) 65536 291271 5170 13653 179755 Write speed, 32768 buffer (bytes/sec) 67216 327680 5190 13797 187580 Notes: (1) All tests done under 1.2 release 33.46. (2) df1: tests done after "addbuffers 32" & fresh formatted disk (3) vd0: tests done with 2Mb recoverable ram disk, nearly full. (4) ram: tests done with ASDG ram attached and active for ram: use (5) All Amiga timings done by Fred Fish. Sun-30/50 timings by Rick Spanbauer. SUPPORT ------- ASDG has a very high commitment to quality, both hardware and software. They have announced a buy-back policy to allow users of older hardware to upgrade to the newer hardware. DISCLAIMER ---------- Neither I nor my employer have any financial interest in ASDG. -- =========================================================================== Fred Fish Motorola Computer Division, 3013 S 52nd St, Tempe, Az 85282 USA {seismo!noao!mcdsun,hplabs!well}!fnf (602) 438-5976 ===========================================================================