xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (07/20/90)
A few weeks back, I promised to summarize the email responses to my "biggest SCSI disk actually functioning" question. I got lots of responses, and poached some off the net to boot, so here is a compendium of net wisdom on the question. I grant you it is long, but even with all the reformatting, it saved 20,000 bytes against the originals. I hope somebody archives this away for the net to access. Attributions are as follows: alfredo = alfredo@ajahnv.lonestar.org (Alfredo Jahn V) billsey = billsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour) chuckp = Chuck.Phillips%FtCollins.NCR.com david = david@twg.com (David S. Herron) GRX1042 = Steve Snodgrass <GRX1042@uoft02.utoledo.edu> jesup = jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) jmeissen = jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org ( Staff OACIS) jones = "Calvin Jones, III" <jones@uv4.eglin.af.mil> juliao = juliao!saul@uunet.UU.NET (Saul A. Juliao) lhoward = tandem!ucsd.edu!ucbvax!cs.utah.edu!esunix!lhoward (Larry Howard) paleo = Constantine A. LaPasha <paleo@uncecs.edu> ruslan = Robin C. LaPasha <ruslan@uncecs.edu> thad = thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) visinfo = visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO c/o Sascha Schnapka) walrus = Udo K Schuermann <walrus@wam.umd.edu> xanthian = xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) [me!] Thanks to all the contributors! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > Some folks I know have a 600Mbyte SCSI drive available at a xanthian > price reasonable to me, but don't know the Amiga from a pile xanthian > of sand. So here are a few of things I'd like to learn from xanthian > the available wisdom of the net: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, xanthian > say for at least a couple of months to make sure it's xanthian > stable? jones > I've been running a Miniscribe 9380S (340Meg) for well over jones > a year now. Since I use it for a BBS, the drive has been on jones > virtually continuosly with no problems. I use a C-Ltd jones > controller with C-Ltd SCSIdos 3.0 software. alfredo > I have a Rodime 210 Meg SCSI. It works great. I had to alfredo > fake out the A2090 controller to format it. I now have a alfredo > GVP controller. It goes out and queries the drive for the alfredo > size and then formats it. I only use one "huge" partition. alfredo > I realize that 210 is small compared to 600Mb but thats my alfredo > info... saul > Hi, hope this helps. I have been running my Amiga 1000 for saul > 5 years now and now have had the same setup for about two saul > years. I have one Maxtor xt-8380s and two Maxtor xt-8760 HD saul > drives and they have been operating without any real saul > problems all this time. saul > Well the biggest I've ever tested was my Maxtor 8760's, each saul > giving me a little over 675 meg each. thad > xanthian asks questions concerning large capacity HDs. Here thad > are some answers based on my setups and experiences using a thad > Supra 4x4 on several A1000 systems (also equipped with Ronin thad > stuff): thad > The very large Maxtors work fine and reliably. I even used thad > one of their 1+ GB drives for a week which was the max I thad > could get it on loan. billsey > Well, I didn't play with it quite that long, but I've billsey > successfully hooked up, formatted and used a CDC (Now billsey > Seagate) 660 meg drive to my Amiga. I regularly run 240+ meg billsey > Maxtors and a slew of smaller drives. visinfo > 3 other people and me have CDC WREN VI 94191-766 hard drives visinfo > running on the Amiga for a few month now. The CDC Wren visinfo > Drives are really great. They work on all controllers we visinfo > have tested: Amiga 3000, A2091, HardFrame, GVP. It also visinfo > works on the A2090, but due to a bug in the hddisk.device visinfo > you cannot access the hard drive above 256MB. The WREN VI is visinfo > also extremely fast. We have a transfer rate of 1.3-1.4 visinfo > Meg/s on most fast controllers. You have a formatted visinfo > capacity of 633 MB on a 94191-766. visinfo > Today we hooked up a Maxtor Tahiti Optical drive to the visinfo > Amiga 3000. It worked without any troubles. We could format visinfo > the Disk and got 442 MB formatted capacity. We could read visinfo > and write files to it like a normal hard drive. For a TMO visinfo > drive it is quite fast: 200KB/s write and 500KB/s read. The visinfo > Tahiti Cartridges you can turn around and so you have 884 visinfo > MB. We only had Cartridges with 512 Byte sectors. We don't visinfo > know if the 1024 Byte sector Cartridges also would work. visinfo > This would give you an extra space of 40 MB/side, but you visinfo > lose compatibility with other controllers (most PC and MAC visinfo > drivers cannot use 1024 Byte sectors). visinfo > There are two minor problems with the Amiga 3000 hard drive visinfo > software and the Tahiti: visinfo > 1. The HD-ToolBox reports that it is a non-direct access visinfo > device and so it refused to Inquire the drive and setup the visinfo > correct values for the Rigid Disk Block. I suppose that this visinfo > has something to do with the Drive Type that is stored in visinfo > the Mode Sense Pages. My SCSIinfo reported that the Drive visinfo > Type is 60 and that it has removable media. (A SyQuest SQ555 visinfo > reports a Drive Type of 30). We entered the values reported visinfo > by SCSIinfo and after that we could write the Rigid Disk visinfo > Blocks and use the drive. visinfo > 2. The scsi.device could not handle the diskchange visinfo > correctly. It tried to do it, but it didn't work. We had to visinfo > enter diskchange manually. This could have something to visinfo > with 1. Note that the removable media support worked great visinfo > on a SyQuest SQ555 (This test was done under Beta 5 visinfo > (Kickstart 36.65)). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to xanthian > low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have xanthian > to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to do xanthian > the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware? jones > In general, the software for your drive is provided by the jones > manufacturer of your SCSI host controller, not the drive jones > manufacturer. chuckp > AmigaDOS only provides the highest level format (i.e. chuckp > Format). Whoever supplies your controller should supply the chuckp > necessary software and documentation for low level chuckp > formatting and partitioning. xanthian > [Responding to alfredo's msg in 1, above:] xanthian > Thanks for the input! Did you need vendor software to xanthian > format this disk using 1) the A2090, and 2) the GVP xanthian > controller? Answer for both low and high level format if xanthian > you can. I'm very interested in how much of the job xanthian > Commodore's furnished software does for me. alfredo > When I used the A2090, I had to fake out the controller by alfredo > setting up a mount list that specified: 2 surfaces, 8204 alfredo > cylinders, and 25 blocks/track. The product of those 3 alfredo > numbers = the total number of blocks (SCSI only understands alfredo > total blocks (most of 'em do) so the other three numbers are alfredo > meaningless... For example, the actual values for my 210 alfredo > Rodime are: 9 surfaces (A2090 can't handle that many alfredo > surfaces), 1216 cylinders, and 41 blocks/track. alfredo > When I used the GVP, I just ran the Install procedure that alfredo > came with it. It went out and queried the drive and alfredo > formatted it with the correct values (9, 1216, 41). It also alfredo > formatted the whole device as a Fast File System (where the alfredo > A2090 has to have the 1st partition be a Slow File System - alfredo > this is fixed in the A2091 controller). GVP does a low and alfredo > high level format. The A2090 will let you PREP (low level) alfredo > as well as using the AmigaDOS "Format" command to do a high alfredo > level format. alfredo > Got to run, Let me know if you have any more questions. I alfredo > am not an expert but can at least relay my own alfredo > experiences... GRX1042 > As long as you have a hard drive controller you should be GRX1042 > fine, although you'll need specs on the drive to create a GRX1042 > mountlist entry (Number of Cylinders, Number of Heads, GRX1042 > Blocks Per Track). saul > Low Level formatting the drive depends on the SCSI saul > controller that you buy. I have a Comspec SCSI controller saul > and it supports any scsi drive, not all do so be careful. I saul > happen to work for Comspec, but owned one of their saul > controllers before working there. xanthian > [email to saul:] xanthian > 1) Did you do the low level format on your Amiga system? saul > Yes I did, if you don't you may have problems with bad saul > blocks later on and the FastFileSystem also does not like if saul > there is garbage or characters it does not understand. saul > Always use Workbench 1.3.2 or later when using drives above saul > 300 meg, if you don't you're asking for a lot of trouble. xanthian > [email to saul:] xanthian > Thanks for the clarifications. I guess I'd better make sure xanthian > I get low level formatting capability with my disk drive, xanthian > then. saul > It's not your drive that has the low-level formatting, its saul > the controller software. thad > Perhaps. Considering the problems with which I helped Dale thad > Luck attempt to setup a Maxtor XT3380 on an A2090 on one of thad > his A2000, we never got it to work. The same drives work thad > fine on my setup. (Dale's problem was about 18 months ago, thad > and perhaps it's been fixed since, but I don't know.) jesup > [answering thad:] jesup > 2090's have problems with certain things, such as very large jesup > drives and drives with very large tracks ( >127 sectors I jesup > think ). The A2091 is _far_ better, as is the setup and jesup > partitioning software. jmeissen > [answering jesup:] jmeissen > Does this mean it can be difficult to use the ST-296N 80MB jmeissen > drive with an A2090? billsey > High level, no problem. Low level, you need to check with billsey > who actually made your HD controller. The older software billsey > from C= for their controllers didn't do a good job on a low billsey > level format. I believe their newer stuff does though. I use billsey > a Supra controller on my systems, and their low level billsey > formatting utilities are excellent. visinfo > With most SCSI Controllers you don't need additional drivers. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard xanthian > that force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, xanthian > or can I just make it one huge tree? walrus > I think the limit is 2.5 GigaBytes. You can definitely have walrus > a single 600 Meg partition :-) lhoward > the Amiga can handle large drives fine, just make sure the lhoward > controller you get can handle the brand you're purchasing. lhoward > For instance, NOBODY can properly control Maxtor drives yet lhoward > (I've tried 4 different controllers that claimed to be able lhoward > to). Micropolis and Wren are good choices. jones > Whether or not there is anything FORCING you to partition jones > your drive, I think experience will tell you that use of jones > several smaller partitions, CHOSEN CAREFULLY, will make the jones > drive perform better and will result is less wear and tear jones > on the actuator. GRX1042 > SCSI won't limit you. I'm pretty sure AmigaDOS will handle GRX1042 > a 600 Meg partition, but I'm not positive. saul > Amiga limits... hmm, well Regular file system has a limit of saul > 54 meg but the Fast file system has a limit of about 1.5 saul > gig. Regular file system is now only used for some boot saul > partitions and a drive can have both file systems on saul > separate partitions. thad > I abhor disk partitions. The only OS that is accursed with thad > the requirement for partitions is MS-DOS, and even their thad > latest version(s) have removed that barrier. But, then, I thad > often need to work with >100MB data files and I prefer thad > dynamic demand resource sharing of ALL system resources thad > (which is but another reason I detest VAX/VMS with its thad > quotas, limits, barriers, fences, etc.) thad > SCSI commands are essentially "by block." I.e. you ask the thad > drive for block 123, you get block 123. You write block thad > 12345 and the drive writes what you present to it. The I/O thad > commands are not cognizant of drive geometry. I don't thad > understand why (most) SCSI support packages for the Amiga thad > insist on being given the number of heads, cylinders, etc. thad > when the software "should" simply interrogate the drive and thad > find out for itself whatever it needs; in fact all it needs thad > is the drive's capacity, PERIOD (e.g. the max number of thad > sectors of which the device is capable). This is one of the thad > attractive aspects of SCSI (on "other" systems :-) Modern thad > SCSI HDs even alter their geometries based on the radius thad > (~cylinder) in attempts to maximize capacity in smaller thad > packages. jesup > [answering thad:] jesup > OFS (in 1.3 and before) was limited to ~50 megabytes. FFS jesup > isn't limited, though there were some pre-release versions jesup > with ~350 MB limits. I think those were fixed for 1.3 jesup > release, certainly for 1.3.2. The limit for FFS is the jesup > limit imposed by drivers, of 4GB per drive. Also, Read() jesup > and Write() are limited to 2GB (negative returns are jesup > errors). billsey > I believe the current limitation is 1.2 gig per partition... billsey > (Although that might be 1.2 tera instead... :-) ) It's not a billsey > problem on most drives... Even the 1.5G drives format to billsey > about a gig only. visinfo > The current limitations I think are about 2GB. Make sure you visinfo > use the newest FastFileSystem (Version 36.03). The older visinfo > versions had some bugs which resulted in a partition visinfo > limitation of about 300MB. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good xanthian > reasons for making it several smaller ones instead? walrus > Yes: walrus > a) Crashes could force you to reformat the entire partition walrus > before restoring your backup (600 megs). walrus > b) Incremental backups are easier to handle with multiple walrus > partitions (one partition per day or so). jones > YES! First, it can take quite a while to perform a directory jones > scan on a partition with several thousand files. Also there jones > are problems with fragmentation. Partitioning won't do away jones > with fragmentation, but if you store non-changing files on jones > one partition (it won't get fragmented at all), and those jones > that change frequently on another partition (hopefully, jones > fairly small). Now, if you make sure that you have another jones > "unused" partition, perhaps for only temporary files, you jones > can copy the partition that gets fragmented to the temporary jones > partition, re-format the original fragmented partition, and jones > copy the data back to un-fragment it. jones > You can also make the drive access time appear much faster jones > by partitioning the drive so that all data used in a given jones > session is located close to each other on the drive, by jones > carefully planning your partitions. chuckp > Isolation of errors. _At the least_, I'd recommend a chuckp > separate small partition for AmigaDOS/WorkBench. If you chuckp > lose the OS, your data can still be recovered, and if you chuckp > lose some data, you can still boot from the hard drive to chuckp > recover it. For more protection, you may want to further chuckp > subdivide. It saved my buns just this morning. Also note chuckp > that disk optimization programs (like BAD) tend to require chuckp > memory proportional to the size of the file system, and chuckp > larger partitions mean greater potential fragmentation of chuckp > the file system (and poorer performance). saul > Backing up a large partition can be a problem, I have one saul > drive set for a full 675meg, but my other 8760 is divided saul > into 125meg segments so I can backup to a 150meg tape when saul > needed (using image backup, about 10 min). thad > Considering the difficulty getting tape drives working for thad > ALL Amiga setups, my advice re: partitioning is to partition thad > ONLY if you cannot afford to nurse an all-files backup in thad > one sitting. The last all-files backup on one of my Amigas thad > required 1,604 floppies using Quarterback. I'm testing some thad > tape software on and off recently and have 5 different tape thad > drives being tested. Seems the problem(s) center(s) around thad > SCSI-direct commands. jesup > [answering thad:] jesup > Hopefully that should end now that there's a standard piece jesup > of Commodore software that uses SCSIDirect (HDBackup/bru on jesup > 2.0). We all have SCSI tape drives here at Commodore-Amiga jesup > attached to our A2091's/A3000's. jmeissen > [answering jesup:] jmeissen > Does/will this work with the A2090 also? jesup > [still answering thad:] jesup > Personally, I partition into chunks to a) make backup easy, jesup > b) provide "firewalls" against a trashed partition (remember jesup > I run test versions fairly often), c) reduce fragmentation jesup > (separate things that change a lot from those that don't, jesup > etc. I also make the partitions the same size, so I can use jesup > one partition as a "hot backup" using diskcopy, for daily jesup > backups of important source. billsey > The smaller your directories, the faster the hash lookup can billsey > be. There's a practical size for directories at about billsey > 100-200 entries. There's no filesystem reason that you can't billsey > use as many entries in any particular directory as you want billsey > though. You just have to look at how many items have the billsey > same hash value. For each item at a particular hash value, billsey > you have to look at one sector to read a directory or find a billsey > file. I tend to use partitions that run about 100M each and billsey > keep them filled with directories rather than files... billsey > Mostly for esthetic reasons with icons... visinfo > The main reason is that you can orginize you data better visinfo > with more than one partition. Also the access time within a visinfo > partition is faster if it is smaller. Don't make too many visinfo > partitions either because each partition takes about 50K of visinfo > RAM. With 10 automount partitions the A3000 refuses to load visinfo > the Kickstart into memory and you can not boot anymore and visinfo > have to use the internal Kickstart, which is quite buggy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup xanthian > that runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one xanthian > tape? Vendor, prices, software used/needed? walrus > The largest tape I heard of is 150 Meg. The drive would walrus > cost you something like $750 if my weak memory serves me. jones > I haven't. If you get any good info, i'd appreciate it if jones > you'd pass it on to me. saul > I use a Viper tape streamer with Comspec's software, the saul > software supports a 60, 150, and 320 Viper. The software saul > supports multiple image copies per tape. Eg 100 Fish disks saul > on a tape in their original floppy size. One draw back is saul > that the software does not support file backup only image. thad > See answer to (4). billsey > There are a couple of streamers out for the Amiga. They tend billsey > to be HD controller vender specific though. Give it another billsey > six months to a year before you see many that work over wide billsey > ranges of controllers. Each HD vendor seems to have their billsey > own interpretation of the SCSIdirect standard. :-) david > As I posted a little while ago -- GVP has the only streaming david > tape unit on the market Right Now. It's a WangTek 150 and david > Creative Computers has it for ~$750. I have no experience david > with it other than that. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the xanthian > Amiga now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than xanthian > this magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the xanthian > video disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable xanthian > graphics programmer's budget. I'd rather go with the video xanthian > technology, to get the replaceable media (great for xanthian > archiving news forever), protection from head crashes, and xanthian > generally whizzy feel, but I'm getting impatient for prices xanthian > to fall; does anyone know of a better price or imminent xanthian > prospects of same for video? ruslan > Kent, Active Circuits has a magneto-optical drive from Sony ruslan > that holds ... well, 500 meg or whatever the ISO standard is ruslan > these days. It's like $4-5000. ruslan > The BIG thing about those (SCSI) drives is - what happens ruslan > when you switch the disk? With other drives (including ruslan > Impulse's XYXIS drive) and drivers, you need to throw in a ruslan > DiskChange command when swapping disks. Active Circuits has ruslan > worked around this somehow, and has a joint blessing from ruslan > CBM and Sony concerning the product. ruslan > Both Active Circuits and Impulse have had their drives out ruslan > since AmiExpo DC (March.) ruslan > Good luck. What kind of pretties are you loading onto such ruslan > big disks? xanthian > [Something about storing every Fish disk ever seen, and my xanthian > other 110 Amiga club and 136 USENet download and 250 other xanthian > floppies in a little more reasonable amount of space, and xanthian > that I hadn't seen any ads yet for Amiga flopticals.] ruslan > Bithead. Nethead? ;^) ruslan > I haven't seen ads either, but Eric Lavitsky of Active ruslan > Circuits is on the net (can't remember his node...) Just ruslan > wait for the next round of wars about image conversion...;^) xanthian > [Something about using a floptical to store a news feed onto.] ruslan > Oh, geez, I hadn't thought of the news feed. Good idea. paleo > Seems I saw a sony magneto-optical, eraseable drive (~300M paleo > per side) with SCSI driver software for about $4k media runs paleo > ~$200-300 per. I don't remember the company name right off paleo > but could look it up for you if needed. -- It does work with paleo > the A2091 controller. walrus > The best price I've heard is for a 650 Meg drive: $4000 R/W walrus > Optical Disks are still in their infancy with regard to walrus > speed and size. The fastest (and most expensive) ODs are no walrus > faster than an average harddisk: 35 msec. The less walrus > expensive models will have access times of 90 msec. walrus > Compare: floppies are 120 msec. My fast (fast!) Quantum HD walrus > is 11/19 msec (r/w). Transfer speeds, however, are fairly walrus > nice with ODs. With low seek times on a big OD, you could walrus > wait several seconds (I think) before information is found. walrus > I have heard that in a few years (read 3 to 5) ODs will hold walrus > 5 to 10 times as much information as they currently do. walrus > This will translate into something like 5 to 8 gigabytes. walrus > Weigh these factors. Considering that OD technology is walrus > still in its infancy (more or less) you'd be buying into an walrus > elite market which is still trying to pay for its R&D. jones > Don't I wish, too. chuckp > On magnetic vs. optical: Optical is a more reliable medium, chuckp > but current seek times for optical drives are right down chuckp > there with the slowest of the slow ST506 magnetic drives. chuckp > (The transfer rates are pretty good, though.) NOTE: All of chuckp > the demo NeXt machines used magnetic disk for swap with good chuckp > reason. If you're considering UNIX, at least get a 20-40MB chuckp > fast magnetic disk for swap and temporary files. saul > Actually Comspec can provide you with a 650 meg or 1 gig saul > removable read/writable optical drive for less than 7K saul > Canadian (about 20% less in US funds, and thats for the 1 saul > gig. The 650 is under 5K.). billsey > $9K seems steep for a rewritable optical drive. Look for billsey > more like $7K at the retail level and a bit more than $5K on billsey > the cheap side. Pretty much any Amiga HD software that billsey > supports any removable media should work well with the R/W billsey > opticals. david > you must not've been lookin at the right places for video david > disks. Active Circuits, for instance, has a 600 meg drive david > for ~ $5000 and media is around $100-$200 (check with 'em david > for details of course.). There's a couple others listed in david > Amazing's current product guide.. all in the same ball park. david > When Eric Lavitsky showed the drive A.C. is selling (this david > was at the NJ Amiga Users group meeting last december) he david > said he basically just plugged it in and it worked. You'd david > hafta type "diskchange" every time you swapped disks, for david > instance. thad > A SONY DAT SCSI tape backup unit was shown at last month's thad > FAUG meeting. It's not yet functioning on the Amiga. The thad > cartridge is barely larger than three credit-cards placed thad > atop one another and stores 1.2GB (yes, gigabytes). The thad > unit DOES work fine on an "IBM-PC" with an Adaptec 1542 SCSI card. thad > Kinda weird how SCSI has come so late to the ``PC'' thad > marketplace yet the overall SCSI support is so much better thad > for the ``PC'' than for other systems. Some of the thad > freely-redistributable software from one of Adaptec's field thad > service persons in Texas even allows one to alter the SCSI thad > OS in SCSI devices. Great stuff! Now WHY isn't such good thad > software available for the Amiga? jesup > [answering thad:] jesup > SCSI support good in the PC market??? Read some of the jesup > things that go on there. Most devices require their own jesup > controller per device (no scsidirect there). It's hard to jesup > plug-and-play with drives, etc, etc. With SCSIDirect, it's jesup > trivial to write a scsi-toy program that allows playing and jesup > looking around all the stuff in a scsi device, and it should jesup > work with all Amiga SCSI controllers, whereas for the PC jesup > market you'd have to write that program very low-level jesup > (bit-banging), and redo it for each controller. Try reading jesup > comp.periphs.scsi. jmeissen > [answering jesup:] jmeissen > Again, does this hold true for the A2090 also? jmeissen > As you may have deduced, I have an A2090, as do a lot of jmeissen > other people. With all this talk about the A2091 I start jmeissen > wondering if I'm going to be locked out of a lot of this jmeissen > unless I start thinking about switching. visinfo > [answering jesup:] visinfo > The SCSIDirect SHOULD work on all SCSI controllers but it visinfo > DOES NOT! This is the main reason that my SCSI utilities visinfo > still are beta versions and I could not send them to visinfo > comp.binaries.amiga yet. The most trouble causes the A2090 visinfo > which works not always. Mostly it hangs after a few SCSI visinfo > commands and it always reports ILLEGAL OR UNEXPECTED SCSI visinfo > PHASE errors. jesup > [answering visinfo:] jesup > The A2090(a) predates the SCSIDirect standard. It happened jesup > to have a predecessor of SCSIDirect, but it doesn't support jesup > SCSIF_AUTOSENSE, and may have some other problems (since jesup > there was no standard, nor any real expectation of external jesup > use I think). To really support SCSIDirect it needs a jesup > complete rewrite. The A2091, A590, and A3000 all support jesup > full SCSIDirect. visinfo > [still answering jesup's prior response:] visinfo > Also the GVP Controllers doesn't make the life of a SCSI visinfo > tool programmer very easy. They use two total incompatible visinfo > devices with the same version number! One supports the visinfo > SCSIDirect and the other does not. The SCSIDirect works visinfo > great with Amiga 3000, A2091, HardFrame and the GVP device visinfo > for removable media. It also works with the FireBall from visinfo > M.A.S.T. (I could only once test SCSIinfo on it). About the visinfo > other controllers I can't tell beacause they are not visinfo > available or not popular here in Swizterland. jesup > [answering visinfo:] jesup > Yes, everyone take notice: use version numbers, and bump jesup > them. At commodore we have made simple little programs that jesup > bump them for us, you can do so also, and make it part of jesup > your makefiles. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > 7) Is the $2500 price for the magnetic disk I'm being quoted xanthian > a "good deal"? ;-) These folks are amateurs in the extreme, xanthian > so I want to make sure I'm saving a lot before I accept the xanthian > attendant risk. walrus > I think it is a good deal. For comparison, our office walrus > (University) just put out a bid for a 420 M SCSI drive (with walrus > controller) for a ps/2 (ugh!) and the cost was $2600. This walrus > drives' access times were quoted as 18 msec and MTBF (mean walrus > time between failure) as 100,000 hrs. Consider these when walrus > you buy the drive. lhoward > This is not "a good deal". I've seen brand new 720Meg lhoward > drives for sale on various BBS networks for $1700 or there lhoward > abouts. xanthian > Do you have BBS/brand name references for the 720MEG disks? xanthian > Do they come with Amiga formatting/partitioning software? lhoward > None of the hard drives come with Amiga software. The lhoward > controller you buy will have the proper software for that lhoward > controller, and probably the only drivers that will work lhoward > with it. jones > Sounds like a pretty good deal, if the system is in good jones > shape. chuckp > $2500 for 600MB is pretty dang good, if it's a good drive. chuckp > (e.g. $10 for a flakey 1GB drive is too much.) If it's a chuckp > Quantum drive, I'd like to place a rather large order... chuckp > ;^) GRX1042 > Well, Abel's Supply sells a 676 Meg Maxtor SCSI drive for GRX1042 > $2187.45. If you'd like to call 'em, it's 615-428-5100. GRX1042 > They also sell a 360 Meg SCSI for $1463.60. saul > That is a reasonable price depending on the make of the saul > drive, I prefer Maxtor. They have been very reliable for saul > me. thad > That price is not unreasonable for a single 600+ MB HD thad > (assuming it's new). Just be SURE you get a good "shoebox" thad > case with hefty power supply and good cooling fan for it. thad > Those large HDs require a LOT of startup current and most thad > power supplies will just cog the drive and not start it thad > spinning up. Generally speaking, the line of Astec (not a thad > typo) power supplies are the ones recommended for use with thad > Maxtors (and are the ones found in the Storage Dimensions (a thad > Maxtor subsidiary) SCSI HD subsystems last time I checked). billsey > Look in Computer Shopper to make sure. I'd say the $2500 is billsey > OK, but not the best deal you will find. A good price for billsey > 600M would be closer to the $1800-2000 range. As an example, billsey > a Wren V 620M (unformatted) drive from DC Drives (The first billsey > ad I turned to that had the big Seagate/Imprimis drives) is billsey > $1859 for the drive itself. $2139 for the Wren VI version billsey > (660M). Add $150 for a case with adequate power supply, billsey > $175 for a SCSI controller and $25 for various cables. Check billsey > to see which drive they're selling you. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- xanthian > Email would probably be a good idea, and I'll summarize back xanthian > in two weeks or so. saul > Yes please do I would like to see what the results are... billsey > My E-Mail seems to be broken big time the last couple of billsey > weeks. :-( Everything I send bounces... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow on converstion about using and supporting the drives mentioned: xanthian > [email to saul:] xanthian > 2) What do you _do_ with all that storage? ;-) saul > I run a UUCP node on the machine that has all this storage, saul > also if you program in several languages or do manual saul > writing you use tonnes of space. xanthian > 3) How much add-on memory, etc., do you have for your A1000? xanthian > I still have my A1000, but expansion stuff is probably xanthian > pretty hard to come by for it by now, though I still like it xanthian > better for style than my A2000. saul > I have 4 meg 32 bit ram internally on top of the standard saul > 512K. I use a LUCAS/Frances in my A1000, these are the saul > public domain 020 and memory boards from Brad Fowles. Now saul > and then I add an AX2000 memory board (2meg). saul > Actually Comspec (the company I work still produce AX2000 saul > ram boards. xanthian > I suppose I should be saving up my nickels for an A3500, which xanthian > sounds like the next machine for me. saul > I purchased my A3000 about 5 weeks ago and love it even saul > though I still use my A1000 90 percent of the time. And I saul > too will trade in my A3000 for an A3500. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many thanks for their hard work to all who responded. As usual with a net response, some answers are contradictory, and some are fuzzy, but there's a lot of good information up their for the poor soul, like me, trying to figure out where to spend the hard disk nickel. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -- I made my way through the computer controlled monorail, car by car, cruising for sentient beings. -- Mark Leyner