c506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Eric Edwards) (05/08/91)
In article <s26gsam@rpi.edu> kudla@rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) writes: > [lotsa text deleted. Basically, he wants a SCSI + Ram expansion board for his A500 but doesn't want to pay for a tiny drive he doesn't need] Is 105 meg too small? If so, skip this paragraph. Both GVP and Supra controlers are available with 105 meg Quantums. Both can be expanded up to 8 meg of ram. The catch is, they are not yet available without the drive and you will pay dearly for the convenience of having Supra or GVP set up you drive for you. Supra's 500XP will "soon" be available without a drive. The last word I had on this is that they were finishing up the documentation. If you can wait, and the price is right, this may be the best bet. It does exactly what you want (sans passthrough) and uses readily available chips for memory expansion. A lot of people have warned me about dealing with MAST enough to make me edgy. The biggest factors though are purely hardware. The memory modules for the StarBlazer are available only from MAST and cost $100/meg. I am also leary of getting a system that allows upgrading to a "16 bit controler" that is twice as fast. How slow is this turkey? That pretty well covers SCSI adapters that have memory expansion without an aditional board. The DataFlyer is priced very competitively and claims to support a special memory expansion board. However, this board is not yet available and there's no guarantee that it will be reasonably priced. The Trumpcards support a memory expansion board called the Meta-4. The trouble is, the board costs signifigantly more than most seperate expansion boards. Looks like a loser to me. The Xetec is a fairly fast (but non-DMA) controler and the memory expansion board is a reasonable $75. But this must be weighed into the equation that board itself costs $175 and that does not include space for a drive. The optional box for the drive is a losing proposition since many places will put a drive in a box with power for half the price. On the up side, you don't have to worry about that until you actually decide to get a drive. > If it turns out to be cheaper to go for Supra's memory thing and > someone else's 500 SCSI interface, so be it, but I'd much rather have > one unit that does both, particularly with a passthru since I intend > to pick up the 690 when it's available. If it had its own power > supply I wouldn't complain either. Supra's 500XP is very competitively priced, gives true fast ram (the last thing I want is 8 meg of A501 ram) and most improtantly, designed to work well with passthrough. I understand Supra went to conciderable effort to make sure the board would work with other expansion boxes. Providing you can find it in stock, it's a better bet than an overpriced memory board for a SCSI controler. I fought with all of these choices and issues durring the past month. In my case I needed both the drive and memory all at once but was too poor to get a packaged deal. In the end I elected to draw on my EE background (No one wants to hire me. I should get *some* use out of it) and take the science fair aproach. I have ordered a bare board ZorroII adapter from Per'spect, a 2091, and 105 meg Quantum. The box and power supply have not yet been aranged. Until I get something to put all this in, my system may not quite pass Class B. Eric Edwards: c506634 @ "I say we take off and nuke the entire site Inet: umcvmb.missouri.edu from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Bitnet: umcvmb.bitnet -- Sigourney Weaver, _Aliens_
tzeng@sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov (Nigel Tzeng) (05/10/91)
In article <c506634.3281@umcvmb.missouri.edu> c506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Eric Edwards) writes: Path: dftsrv!ukma!wuarchive!udel!sbcs!umcvmb!c506634 From: c506634@umcvmb.missouri.edu (Eric Edwards) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.hardware,comp.sys.amiga.marketplace Summary: Market/pricing issues make it complicated Keywords: No 40 meg drives need apply Date: 8 May 91 01:27:07 GMT Sender: usenet@sbcs.sunysb.edu (Usenet poster) Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Organization: Hackers without Hard Drives Lines: 68 Xref: dftsrv comp.sys.amiga.misc:1975 comp.sys.amiga.hardware:8263 comp.sys.amiga.marketplace:703 In article <s26gsam@rpi.edu> kudla@rpi.edu (Robert J. Kudla) writes: > [lotsa text deleted. Basically, he wants a SCSI + Ram expansion board for his A500 but doesn't want to pay for a tiny drive he doesn't need] [supra, GVP and MAST covered] That pretty well covers SCSI adapters that have memory expansion without an aditional board. The DataFlyer is priced very competitively and claims to support a special memory expansion board. However, this board is not yet available and there's no guarantee that it will be reasonably priced. The Trumpcards support a memory expansion board called the Meta-4. The trouble is, the board costs signifigantly more than most seperate expansion boards. Looks like a loser to me. Yes and no...the Meta 4 card is a half sized A2000 card that fits in the little box they sell you. If you're thinking about ever trading in your 500 for a 2000 it may not be a bad bet since it is fully compatible. This is kind of a bogus statement since I upgraded my A500 to a 2000 a year and half ago and sold the whole dohicky at the same time. On the other hand it made life easier for me since I could just plop the Trumpcard into my 2000 to copy all the files off directly instead of going to floppy. Looking back I should have kept the thing since it should also work on the A1000 I bought real cheap. Eric Edwards: c506634 @ "I say we take off and nuke the entire site Inet: umcvmb.missouri.edu from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." Bitnet: umcvmb.bitnet -- Sigourney Weaver, _Aliens_ NT --- sig under construction...