dvf@unhd.unh.edu (David V Feldman) (03/06/91)
Greetings, I have been thinking for some time about acquiring a very large capacity disk drive. Fujitsu seems to make a 672 Meg drive and even a 1.2 Gig drive. Do they have any competition? Does anyone have any experience with these products? The only distributor that I am aware of that carries these drives is a mail-order firm called M.A.S.T. I would appreciate hearing good or bad from anyone who has ever dealt with them. The primary reason I am interested in drives this large is to generate, manipulate and play sound samples up to an hour long. With a little effort I have been able to play samples off my 40 meg drive limited only by the memory capacity of the drive. I can't think of any reason why I would run into new difficulties with these much larger drives; can anyone else? I would be interested in hearing from anyone making computer music with the Amiga in roughly this way. I would also be happy to share my simple double-buffering program (written in JForth) with anyone who wants it. Does anyone know a way to interface an Amiga with a DAT? This is a possible less expensive (but less flexible) alternative for me. Please reply to D_FELDMAN@UNHH.UNH.EDU . Thank you very much in advance. David Feldman
blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner) (03/06/91)
dvf@unhd.unh.edu (David V Feldman) writes: > I have been thinking for some time about acquiring a very large capacity > disk drive. Fujitsu seems to make a 672 Meg drive and even a 1.2 Gig > drive. Do they have any competition? Does anyone have any experience > with these products? I've run both the Fujitsu 1.2 GB and H-P's 1 GB drive on my A3000. The Fujitsu was considerably faster. DiskSpeed 3.1 reported a peak read speed of 1.9 megabytes/sec, and the H-P "only" :-) reached 1.5 megabytes/sec. This was on an A3000, you probably won't reach those speeds on any other controller, but the Hardframe or A2091 should be fairly close. Both drives have a 2 year warranty as I remember. -- Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 blgardne@javelin.sim.es.com or ...dsd.es.com!javelin!blgardne DoD #0046 My other motorcycle is a Quadracer. BIX: blaine_g Anticipation, anticipation, is making me late, is keeping me waiting.
jgay@digi.lonestar.org (john gay) (03/08/91)
From article <1991Mar6.145948.17848@javelin.es.com>, by blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner):
> Both [fujitsu, hp > 1 GB] drives have a 2 year warranty as I remember.
Don't know anything as far as the hp drives, but the fujitsu drives have
a 5 (yes, 5) year warranty. Fujitsu also reports a MTBF of 200,000 hours
(a little less than 23 years). I don't know how they came up with that figure,
but statics can't lie :) (or can they :)). There was some guy posting in
misc.forsale.computers (IMHO, inappropriately) who's business sells the fujitsu
drives. You might look through your archives (it was only a couple weeks
ago) to see if you still have the article (no, we don't have it).
john gay.hill@evax.arl.utexas.edu (Adam Hill) (03/08/91)
Advanced Storage Systems here in Dallas have played with a DAT, I
have NO idea if they got it working. Adv. Storage makes the NEXUS SCSI
card.
A CDTV developer (Scott Lamb) has a 1.2G MiniScribe and has had no
problems (Besides formatting - You need a *BIG* bitmap for the initial
format, A small gotcha). He gets 1.9Megs/sec on a Hardframe. It uses
so much DMA bandwidth in that mode as to "artifact" the screen,
because the Amiga runs out of DMA time to refresh the screen :-)
HP has a 5 year warranty as well.... Seems you can't loose with BIG drives.
--
adam hill -- hill@evax.uta.edu
I programmed for three days Make Up Your Own Mind.. AMIGA!
And heard no human voices. Amiga... Multimedia NOW!
But the hard disk sang. - TZoP Born To Run SVR4dac@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au (Andrew Clayton) (03/08/91)
In article <1991Mar7.191718.8668@digi.lonestar.org>, john gay writes: > From article <1991Mar6.145948.17848@javelin.es.com>, by blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner): > > Both [fujitsu, hp > 1 GB] drives have a 2 year warranty as I remember. > > Don't know anything as far as the hp drives, but the fujitsu drives have > a 5 (yes, 5) year warranty. Fujitsu also reports a MTBF of 200,000 hours > (a little less than 23 years). I don't know how they came up with that figure, > but statics can't lie :) (or can they :)). Statics can't lie, unless you recompile them with a different value. :-) Dac -- David Andrew Clayton. // _l _ _ dac@prolix.pub.uu.oz.au *or*|I post.I am. Canberra, Australia.\X/ (_](_l(_ ccadfa.cc.adfa.oz.au!prolix!dac@munnari.oz
blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner) (03/09/91)
jgay@digi.lonestar.org (john gay) writes: >From article <1991Mar6.145948.17848@javelin.es.com>, by blgardne@javelin.es.com (Blaine Gardner): >> Both [fujitsu, hp > 1 GB] drives have a 2 year warranty as I remember. >Don't know anything as far as the hp drives, but the fujitsu drives have >a 5 (yes, 5) year warranty. Fujitsu also reports a MTBF of 200,000 hours >(a little less than 23 years). I don't know how they came up with that figure, >but statics can't lie :) (or can they :)). That's right, 5 years. I think the H-P is also 5 years. As to the MTBF figure, I had the H-P die on me after a couple hundred hours. I'd say the warranty carries a whole lot more weight than any overinflated MTBF numbers. Both are nice drives, but I'd buy the Fujitsu myself because it's faster, cheaper, and a little bigger. -- Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108 blgardne@javelin.sim.es.com or ...dsd.es.com!javelin!blgardne DoD #0046 My other motorcycle is a Quadracer. BIX: blaine_g Anticipation, anticipation, is making me late, is keeping me waiting.
tucker@tahoe.unr.edu (Aaron Tucker) (03/09/91)
Fujitsu drives offer not only a 5 year warranty, but they have a 1 800 number for thier drives over 600MB. You call this number after a failure, and they will have a replacement to you within 24 hours. How's that for customer service! M.A.S.T. is running a 1.2G drive in thier BBS...they are planning to fill it up with lots of 768x480x24 pictures for Colorburst customers. Juan Trevino Modern Media "Why try HAM-E or DCTV when they're not even 24bit? Go for the real thing...COlorburst or Firecracker"
jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (03/26/91)
In article <1991Mar8.085326.27349@evax.arl.utexas.edu> hill@evax.arl.utexas.edu (Adam Hill) writes: > A CDTV developer (Scott Lamb) has a 1.2G MiniScribe and has had no >problems (Besides formatting - You need a *BIG* bitmap for the initial >format, A small gotcha). He gets 1.9Megs/sec on a Hardframe. It uses The ST1480N gets about 2MB/s through the FS under diskspeed in the earlier portions of the disk (zone recorded drives get slower on higher cylinders, since there are less sectors per cylinder). Nice drive (4400 rpm, 400+MB, 3.5"). I like it. ;-) >so much DMA bandwidth in that mode as to "artifact" the screen, >because the Amiga runs out of DMA time to refresh the screen :-) That shouldn't happen! (Right, dave?) Screen refresh has higher priority than most anything, I thought. (Maybe if they hold the bus too long... ah, too much hardware for me. ;-) -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult." (From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)
FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) (03/30/91)
OK, now *I* have a question on very large drives. Over in the Sun thread a warning was posted recently about Unix SCSI drivers not handling drives larger than about 1.07 Gig. properly. I called Sun and they confirmed they don't support drives larger than 669 Meg but they are working on a new driver that will fix the problem and will probably be selling the larger SCSI drives themselves Real Soon Now. I believe Randall said Amiga has no problem with very large SCSI drives but perhaps we could hear it just One More Time? How big a partition can FFS support? OFS? Dana Bourgeois @ cup.portal.com "My drive is so big..." "(unison) How big is it???" "It's *soooo* big that only an Amiga can format it!!!"
sck@watson.ibm.com (Scott C. Kennedy) (03/31/91)
Dana, Although I'm not from Commodore I have taken several X-Lrg capacity drives homes, and formatted them on the Amiga. I currently have several 300 MB partitions on a 1.6 GB drive, and have had no problems. Note: I am using a 2091 (great job guys!) and the drives are Seagte Elite ST1600N. As a side point, when I asked what a good partition size was for the Amiga, I was told by several people that 50-70 MB is optimal, though I have not seen any speed differences due to partition size, except for having the Amiga draw 96 disk icons on boot. ( I have had 3 of these monsters on my Amy at once, but my management made me stop :( ) Currently, I am using my Amiga to diagnose possibly defective drives for the Unix boxes here @ research because it is the most forgiving and user-friendly scsi machines that I have at my disposal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Scott C. Kennedy (sck@watson.ibm.com) | "All we are saying ... Distributed High Performance Computing | is give peace a chance..." I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Facility | John Lennon - Dec. 8, 1980 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Scott C. Kennedy (sck@watson.ibm.com) | "All we are saying ... Distributed High Performance Computing | is give peace a chance..." I.B.M. Thomas J. Watson Research Facility | John Lennon - Dec. 8, 1980 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (04/02/91)
In article <40684@cup.portal.com> FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) writes: >OK, now *I* have a question on very large drives. Over in the Sun >thread a warning was posted recently about Unix SCSI drivers not >handling drives larger than about 1.07 Gig. properly. I called Sun >and they confirmed they don't support drives larger than 669 Meg but >they are working on a new driver that will fix the problem and will >probably be selling the larger SCSI drives themselves Real Soon Now. > >I believe Randall said Amiga has no problem with very large SCSI drives >but perhaps we could hear it just One More Time? How big a partition >can FFS support? OFS? The current A590/A2091/A3000 scsi drivers have the same 1gig limit Sun (I think) and Dec (both VMS and Ultrix) hit - we don't check the block address for whether it fits in a 6-byte read. The next general A3000 release should support it. I suspect most or all 3rd party SCSI drivers have the same problem currently (at least we're in good company here, Sun, Dec, etc). If you low-level format with direct scsi commands for larger logical blocks, you should be able to handle up to 2 gig with 1024 byte logical SCSI blocks. HDToolbox can't do this, though once you get it changed it should work ok (we've tested it with things like Magneto-Optical disks with 1K blocks, and steve has tested it a bunch I think). -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion. Thus spake the Master Ninjei: "To program a million-line operating system is easy, to change a man's temperament is more difficult." (From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)