knudsen@ihwpt.ATT.COM (mike knudsen) (08/25/87)
Well there's only a week left for us Chicago RainbowFesters to get our $30 off on the Sardis no-halt controller. Meanwhile DISTO is supposed to be right around the corner with their own version. According to conversations on Delphi, some advantages of the DISTO unit are: Can use the snap-in clock & printer port cards just like their regular controller Can get without RS Disk BASIC but instead a boot ROM that boots up OS9 on power-up (big deal, I can type "DOS") Allegedly Sardis will sell you theirs with NO ROM so you can just pop in your existing RS-DOS. A disadvantage: DISTO can't have multiple ROMs like their regular one. Also is unclear who is writing their OS9 drivers (Sardis' are by DP Johnson of SDISK fame). Price is estimated at US $150. Steve Bjork thought it would be out by now, but latest word from another is "by October RainbowFest." BTW, two weeks ago a Delphi user reported getting his Sardis up & running, not much sweat. Please post any additions or corrections to the above. Can't wait to edit while a compile goes in the other window... -- Mike J Knudsen ...ihnp4!ihwpt!knudsen Bell Labs(AT&T) Delphi: RAGTIMER CIS: <memory failure, too many digits> "Just say NO to MS-DOS!"
dibble@cs.rochester.edu (Peter C. Dibble) (08/25/87)
In article <1933@ihwpt.ATT.COM>, knudsen@ihwpt.ATT.COM (mike knudsen) writes: > Well there's only a week left for us Chicago RainbowFesters > to get our $30 off on the Sardis no-halt controller. > > BTW, two weeks ago a Delphi user reported getting his Sardis up > & running, not much sweat. > > Please post any additions or corrections to the above. > Can't wait to edit while a compile goes in the other window... I have a Sardis controller. The software installation was so easy that I found it a little condescending (run the following programs and scripts and you will wind up with a bootable disk (double sided if you like)). The controller does give no-halt performance with no problems that I can detect. There's some stuff in the manual that suggests that I will be able to put more RAM on the board and use it as a cache for the disk. The CoCo's habit of ignoring everything when it was using the disk offended me. I am glad I could cure it. Peter Dibble