zabot@cesare.dec.com (Adv.Tech.Mgr-ACT Torino) (12/24/86)
We (a friend of mine and myself) have finally got a Sidecar.
It's a real good piece of hardware and you get almost everything you
expect from it. Rumor in the past said that it was eating Amiga memory
( 128k) to share the monitor. It's not true. Plugging the sidecar
does NOT affect your Amiga ( almost).
Our system has a NEC IBM conpatible card ( 20MB) and the speed is good
also if I'm not impressed (2-3 times faster that the regular
floppies).
Partitioning has not been a problem ( 15+5 our choice). We have
also tried to dedicate the full disk alternatively to each side.
No Problem.
Then we have inserted an expansion card , with 340K, LPT2 and COM2.
(again IBM-Taiwan stuff) No problem.
Two things were disappointing.
* The phisical space for the cards doesn't allow a good fitting.
The cards ( perfectly fitting into an IBM ) are a little taller and a
little wider that the space allocated to them. With GREAT care and
even more patience the two cards finally got their home. No
possibility for the third card to be inserted : the hard disk is a
1 and 1/2 card.
* The manual states that you should be able to copy files from Amiga
to MsDOS and viceversa. We tried and failed.
The procedure:
Mount JF:
Assign
up to here no problem. You'll find your JF mounted. But when you
copy DFn:xxxx to JF:a:zzzzz
the answer you get is always JF:a: unknown or not an object module,
I don't remeber which.
We HAVE NOT tried and we WILL NOT the wrong power on/off sequence.
The manual clearly states NOT TO!
The prices we paid ( Italian Lire , 1US$=1400Lit)
Sidecar 1,190,000 ( ~850$)
Nec 20Mb 850,000 ( ~600$)
MemCard ==
to make comparison, here an Amiga, Monitor,512K, is priced
2,200,000 (~1,570$)
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year to all the Amiganti.
marco