xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (07/04/90)
Some folks I know have a 600Mbyte SCSI drive available at a price reasonable to me, but don't know the Amiga from a pile of sand. So here are a few of things I'd like to learn from the available wisdom of the net: 1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, say for at least a couple of months to make sure it's stable? 2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to do the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware? 3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can I just make it one huge tree? 4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for making it several smaller ones instead? 5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup that runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one tape? Vendor, prices, software used/needed? 6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the Amiga now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than this magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the video disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable graphics programmer's budget. I'd rather go with the video technology, to get the replaceable media (great for archiving news forever), protection from head crashes, and generally whizzy feel, but I'm getting impatient for prices to fall; does anyone know of a better price or imminent prospects of same for video? 7) Is the $2500 price for the magnetic disk I'm being quoted a "good deal"? ;-) These folks are amateurs in the extreme, so I want to make sure I'm saving a lot before I accept the attendant risk. Email would probably be a good idea, and I'll summarize back in two weeks or so. Kent, the man from xanth. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> -- (Who really shouldn't be thinking about spending more money, but...)
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (07/06/90)
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) <1990Jul4.035345.18031@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> asks questions concerning large capacity HDs. Here are some answers based on my setups and experiences using a Supra 4x4 on several A1000 systems (also equipped with Ronin stuff): 1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, say for at least a couple of months to make sure it's stable? The very large Maxtors work fine and reliably. I even used one of their 1+ GB drives for a week which was the max I could get it on loan. 2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to do the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware? Perhaps. Considering the problems with which I helped Dale Luck attempt to setup a Maxtor XT3380 on an A2090 on one of his A2000, we never got it to work. The same drives work fine on my setup. (Dale's problem was about 18 months ago, and perhaps it's been fixed since, but I don't know.) 3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can I just make it one huge tree? I abhor disk partitions. The only OS that is accursed with the requirement for partitions is MS-DOS, and even their latest version(s) have removed that barrier. But, then, I often need to work with >100MB data files and I prefer dynamic demand resource sharing of ALL system resources (which is but another reason I detest VAX/VMS with its quotas, limits, barriers, fences, etc.) SCSI commands are essentially "by block." I.e. you ask the drive for block 123, you get block 123. You write block 12345 and the drive writes what you present to it. The I/O commands are not cognizant of drive geometry. I don't understand why (most) SCSI support packages for the Amiga insist on being given the number of heads, cylinders, etc. when the software "should" simply interrogate the drive and find out for itself whatever it needs; in fact all it needs is the drive's capacity, PERIOD (e.g. the max number of sectors of which the device is capable). This is one of the attractive aspects of SCSI (on "other" systems :-) Modern SCSI HDs even alter their geometries based on the radius (~ cylinder) in attempts to maximize capacity in smaller packages. 4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for making it several smaller ones instead? Considering the difficulty getting tape drives working for ALL Amiga setups, my advice re: partitioning is to partition ONLY if you cannot afford to nurse an all-files backup in one sitting. The last all-files backup on one of my Amigas required 1,604 floppies using Quarterback. I'm testing some tape software on and off recently and have 5 different tape drives being tested. Seems the problem(s) center(s) around SCSI-direct commands. 5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup that runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one tape? Vendor, prices, software used/needed? See answer to (4). 6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the Amiga now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than this magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the video disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable graphics [ ... material deleted ... ] A SONY DAT SCSI tape backup unit was shown at last month's FAUG meeting. It's not yet functioning on the Amiga. The cartridge is barely larger than three credit-cards placed atop one another and stores 1.2GB (yes, gigabytes). The unit DOES work fine on an "IBM-PC" with an Adaptec 1542 SCSI card. Kinda weird how SCSI has come so late to the ``PC'' marketplace yet the overall SCSI support is so much better for the ``PC'' than for other systems. Some of the freely-redistributable software from one of Adaptec's field service persons in Texas even allows one to alter the SCSI OS in SCSI devices. Great stuff! Now WHY isn't such good software available for the Amiga? 7) Is the $2500 price for the magnetic disk I'm being quoted a "good deal"? ;-) That price is not unreasonable for a single 600+ MB HD (assuming it's new). Just be SURE you get a good "shoebox" case with hefty power supply and good cooling fan for it. Those large HDs require a LOT of startup current and most power supplies will just cog the drive and not start it spinning up. Generally speaking, the line of Astec (not a typo) power supplies are the ones recommended for use with Maxtors (and are the ones found in the Storage Dimensions (a Maxtor subsidiary) SCSI HD subsystems last time I checked). Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]
billsey@agora.uucp (Bill Seymour) (07/10/90)
In article <1990Jul4.035345.18031@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
:Some folks I know have a 600Mbyte SCSI drive available at a price
:reasonable to me, but don't know the Amiga from a pile of sand.
:So here are a few of things I'd like to learn from the available
:wisdom of the net:
:
:1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, say
: for at least a couple of months to make sure it's stable?
Well, I didn't play with it quite that long, but I've successfully
hooked up, formatted and used a CDC (Now Seagate) 660 meg drive to my
Amiga. I regularly run 240+ meg Maxtors and a slew of smaller drives.
:2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to
: low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have
: to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to
: do the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware?
High level, no problem. Low level, you need to check with who
actually made your HD controller. The older software from C= for thier
controllers didn't do a good job on a low level format. I believe their
newer stuff does though. I use a Supra controller on my systems, and
their low level formatting utilities are excellent.
:3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that
: force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can
: I just make it one huge tree?
I believe the current limitation is 1.2 gig per partition...
(Although that might be 1.2 tera instead... :-) ) It's not a problem
on most drives... Even the 1.5G drives format to about a gig only.
:4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for
: making it several smaller ones instead?
The smaller you directories, the faster the hash lookup can be.
There's a practical size for directories at about 100-200 entries. There's
no filesystem reason that you can't use as many entries in any particular
directory as you want though. You just have to look at how many items
have the same hash value. For each item at a particular hash value,
you have to look at one sector to read a directory or find a file. I
tend to use partitions that run about 100M each and keep them filled with
directories rather than files... Mostly for esthetic reasons with icons...
:5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup that
: runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one tape?
: Vendor, prices, software used/needed?
There are a couple of streamers out for the Amiga. They tend
to be HD controller vender specific though. Give it another six
months to a year before you see many that work over wide ranges
of controllers. Each HD vendor seems to have their own interpretation
of the SCSIdirect standard. :-)
:6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the Amiga
: now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than this
: magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the video
: disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable graphics
: programmer's budget. I'd rather go with the video technology,
: to get the replaceable media (great for archiving news forever),
: protection from head crashes, and generally whizzy feel, but I'm
: getting impatient for prices to fall; does anyone know of a
: better price or imminent prospects of same for video?
$9K seems steep for a rewritable optical drive. Look for more
like $7K at the retail level and a bit more than $5K on the cheap side.
Pretty much any Amiga HD software that supports any removable media should
work well with the R/W opticals.
:7) Is the $2500 price for the magnetic disk I'm being quoted a "good
: deal"? ;-) These folks are amateurs in the extreme, so I want
: to make sure I'm saving a lot before I accept the attendant risk.
Look in Computer Shopper to make sure. I'd say the $2500 is OK, but
not the best deal you will find. A good price for 600M would be closer to
the $1800-2000 range. As an example, a Wren V 620M (unformatted) drive
from DC Drives (The first add I turned to that had the big Seagate/Imprimis
drives) is $1859 for the drive itself. $2139 for the Wren VI version (660M).
Add $150 for a case with adequate power supply, $175 for a SCSI controller
and $25 for various cables. Check to see which drive they're selling you.
:Email would probably be a good idea, and I'll summarize back in two
:weeks or so.
My E-Mail seems to be broken big time the last couple of weeks. :-(
Everything I send bounces...
:Kent, the man from xanth.
:<xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG: <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us:
:--
:(Who really shouldn't be thinking about spending more money, but...)
-Bill Seymour ...tektronix!reed!percival!agora!billsey
=============================================================================
Bejed, Inc. NES, Inc. Northwest Amiga Group At Home Sometimes
(503) 281-8153 (503) 246-9311 (503) 656-7393 BBS (503) 640-0842jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (07/13/90)
In article <31485@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >Perhaps. Considering the problems with which I helped Dale Luck attempt to >setup a Maxtor XT3380 on an A2090 on one of his A2000, we never got it to >work. The same drives work fine on my setup. (Dale's problem was about 18 >months ago, and perhaps it's been fixed since, but I don't know.) 2090's have problems with certain things, such as very large drives and drives with very large tracks ( >127 sectors I think ). The A2091 is _far_ better, as is the setup and partitioning software. > 3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that > force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can > I just make it one huge tree? OFS (in 1.3 and before) was limited to ~50 megabytes. FFS isn't limited, though there were some pre-release versions with ~350 MB limits. I think those were fixed for 1.3 release, certainly for 1.3.2. The limit for FFS is the limit imposed by drivers, of 4GB per drive. Also, Read() and Write() are limited to 2GB (negative returns are errors). > 4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for > making it several smaller ones instead? > >Considering the difficulty getting tape drives working for ALL Amiga setups, >my advice re: partitioning is to partition ONLY if you cannot afford to nurse >an all-files backup in one sitting. The last all-files backup on one of my >Amigas required 1,604 floppies using Quarterback. I'm testing some tape >software on and off recently and have 5 different tape drives being tested. >Seems the problem(s) center(s) around SCSI-direct commands. Hopefully that should end now that there's a standard piece of Commodore software that uses SCSIDirect (HDBackup/bru on 2.0). We all have SCSI tape drives here at Commodore-Amiga attached to our A2091's/A3000's. Personally, I partition into chunks to a) make backup easy, b) provide "firewalls" against a trashed partition (remember I run test versions fairly often), c) reduce fragmentation (separate things that change a lot from those that don't, etc. I also make the partitions the same size, so I can use one partition as a "hot backup" using diskcopy, for daily backups of important source. >Kinda weird how SCSI has come so late to the ``PC'' marketplace yet the >overall SCSI support is so much better for the ``PC'' than for other systems. >Some of the freely-redistributable software from one of Adaptec's field >service persons in Texas even allows one to alter the SCSI OS in SCSI devices. >Great stuff! Now WHY isn't such good software available for the Amiga? SCSI support good in the PC market??? Read some of the things that go on there. Most devices require their own controller per device (no scsidirect there). It's hard to plug-and-play with drives, etc, etc. With SCSIDirect, it's trivial to write a scsi-toy program that allows playing and looking around all the stuff in a scsi device, and it should work with all Amiga SCSI controllers, whereas for the PC market you'd have to write that program very low-level (bit-banging), and redo it for each controller. Try reading comp.periphs.scsi. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"
visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO c/o Sascha Schnapka) (07/13/90)
In article <1990Jul4.035345.18031@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes: >Some folks I know have a 600Mbyte SCSI drive available at a price >reasonable to me, but don't know the Amiga from a pile of sand. >So here are a few of things I'd like to learn from the available >wisdom of the net: > >1) What's the biggest SCSI drive anyone has up and running, say > for at least a couple of months to make sure it's stable? 3 other people and me have CDC WREN VI 94191-766 hard drives running on the Amiga for a few month now. The CDC Wren Drives are really great. They work on all controllers we have tested: Amiga 3000, A2091, HardFrame, GVP. It also works on the A2090, but due to a bug in the hddisk.device you cannot access the hard drive above 256MB. The WREN VI is also extremely fast. We have a transfer rate of 1.3-1.4 Meg/s on most fast controllers. You have a formatted capacity of 633 MB on a 94191-766. Today we hooked up a Maxtor Tahiti Optical drive to the Amiga 3000. It worked without any troubles. We could format the Disk and got 442 MB formatted capacity. We could read and write files to it like a normal hard drive. For a TMO drive it is quite fast: 200KB/s write and 500KB/s read. The Tahiti Cartridges you can turn around and so you have 884 MB. We only had Cartridges with 512 Byte sectors. We don't know if the 1024 Byte sector Cartridges also would work. This would give you an extra space of 40 MB/side, but you loose compatibility with other controllers (most PC and MAC drivers cannot use 1024 Byte sectors). There are two minor problems with the Amiga 3000 hard drive software and the Tahiti: 1. The HD-ToolBox reports that it is a non-direct access device and so it refused to Inquire the drive and setup the correct values for the Rigid Disk Block. I suppose that this has something to do with the Drive Type that is stored in the Mode Sense Pages. My SCSIinfo reported that the Drive Type is 60 and that it has removable media. (A SyQuest SQ555 reports a Drive Type of 30). We entered the values reported by SCSIinfo and after that we could write the Rigid Disk Blocks and use the drive. 2. The scsi.device could not handle the diskchange correctly. It tried to do it, but it didn't work. We had to enter diskchange manually. This could have something to with 1. Note that the removable media support worked great on a SyQuest SQ555 (This test was done under Beta 5 (Kickstart 36.65)). >2) Does the software Commodore supplies with 1.3 suffice to > low/high level format such a beast, or does the vendor have > to know enough about the Amiga to supply some software to > do the job -- i.e., can I just buy hardware? With most SCSI Controller you don't need additional drivers. >3) Are there limitations in AmigaDOS or in the SCSI standard that > force large disks to be partitioned in multiple pieces, or can > I just make it one huge tree? The current limitations I think are about 2GB. Make sure you use the newest FastFileSystem (Version 36.03). The older versions had some bugs which resulted in a partition limitation of about 300MB. >4) If I can make it one big partition, are there good reasons for > making it several smaller ones instead? The main reason is that you can orginize you data better with more than one partition. Also the access time within a partition is faster if it is smaller. Don't make too many partitions either because each partition takes about 50K of RAM. With 10 automount partitions the A3000 refuses to load the Kickstart into memory and you can not boot anymore and have to use the internal Kickstart, which is quite buggy. ><xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us> >-- >(Who really shouldn't be thinking about spending more money, but...) /* -------------------------- SG (Simeon Graphics) ---------------------- */ /* Peter Simeon, UUCP: | // // */ /* visinfo@bernina.ethz.ch | // Long live the AMIGA! // */ /* BIX: hardwiz | \X/ \X/ */ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
visinfo@ethz.UUCP (VISINFO c/o Sascha Schnapka) (07/13/90)
> SCSI support good in the PC market??? Read some of the things >that go on there. Most devices require their own controller per device (no >scsidirect there). It's hard to plug-and-play with drives, etc, etc. >With SCSIDirect, it's trivial to write a scsi-toy program that allows playing >and looking around all the stuff in a scsi device, and it should work with ^^^^^^ >all Amiga SCSI controllers, whereas for the PC market you'd have to write that >program very low-level (bit-banging), and redo it for each controller. >Try reading comp.periphs.scsi. The SCSIDirect SHOULD work on all SCSI controllers but it DOES NOT! This is the main reason that my SCSI utilities still are beta versions and I could not send them to comp.binaries.amiga yet. The most trouble causes the A2090 which works not always. Mostly it hangs after a few SCSI commands and it always reports ILLEGAL OR UNEXPECTED SCSI PHASE errors. Also the GVP Controllers doesn't make the life of a SCSI tool programmer very easy. They use two total incompatible devices with the same version number! One supports the SCSIDirect and the other does not. The SCSIDirect works great with Amiga 3000, A2091, HardFrame and the GVP device for removable media. It also works with the FireBall from M.A.S.T. (I could only once test SCSIinfo on it). About the other controllers I can't tell beacause they are not available or not popular here in Swizterland. >-- >Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. >{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup >Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!" /* -------------------------- SG (Simeon Graphics) ---------------------- */ /* Peter Simeon, UUCP: | // // */ /* visinfo@bernina.ethz.ch | // Long live the AMIGA! // */ /* BIX: hardwiz | \X/ \X/ */ /* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- */
jmeissen@oregon.oacis.org ( Staff OACIS) (07/14/90)
In article <13191@cbmvax.commodore.com> jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup) writes: > 2090's have problems with certain things, such as very large drives and >drives with very large tracks ( >127 sectors I think ). The A2091 is _far_ >better, as is the setup and partitioning software. Does this mean it can be difficult to use the ST-296N 80MB drive with an A2090? > > Hopefully that should end now that there's a standard piece of >Commodore software that uses SCSIDirect (HDBackup/bru on 2.0). We all have >SCSI tape drives here at Commodore-Amiga attached to our A2091's/A3000's. Does/will this work with the A2090 also? >With SCSIDirect, it's trivial to write a scsi-toy program that allows playing >and looking around all the stuff in a scsi device, and it should work with >all Amiga SCSI controllers, whereas for the PC market you'd have to write that Again, does this hold true for the A2090 also? As you may have deduced, I have an A2090, as do a lot of other people. With all this talk about the A2091 I start wondering if I'm going to be locked out of a lot of this unless I start thinking about switching. -- John Meissen .............................. Oregon Advanced Computing Institute jmeissen@oacis.org (Internet) | "That's the remarkable thing about life; ..!sequent!oacis!jmeissen (UUCP) | things are never so bad that they can't jmeissen (BIX) | get worse." - Calvin & Hobbes
jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (07/14/90)
In article <5085@ethz.UUCP> visinfo@bernina.ethz.ch.UUCP (VISINFO c/o Peter Simeon) writes: > >The SCSIDirect SHOULD work on all SCSI controllers but it DOES NOT! This is >the main reason that my SCSI utilities still are beta versions and I could >not send them to comp.binaries.amiga yet. The most trouble causes the A2090 >which works not always. Mostly it hangs after a few SCSI commands and it >always reports ILLEGAL OR UNEXPECTED SCSI PHASE errors. The A2090(a) predates the SCSIDirect standard. It happened to have a predecessor of SCSIDirect, but it doesn't support SCSIF_AUTOSENSE, and may have some other problems (since there was no standard, nor any real expectation of external use I think). To really support SCSIDirect it needs a complete rewrite. The A2091, A590, and A3000 all support full SCSIDirect. >Also the GVP Controllers doesn't make the life of a SCSI tool programmer >very easy. They use two total incompatible devices with the same version >number! One supports the SCSIDirect and the other does not. Yes, everyone take notice: use version numbers, and bump them. At commodore we have made simple little programs that bump them for us, you can do so also, and make it part of your makefiles. -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com BIX: rjesup Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"
david@twg.com (David S. Herron) (07/15/90)
In article <31485@cup.portal.com> thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) writes: >xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) ><1990Jul4.035345.18031@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> asks questions concerning large > 5) Has anybody got experience with a streaming tape backup that > runs on the Amiga and can back this sucker up on one tape? > Vendor, prices, software used/needed? As I posted a little while ago -- GVP has the only streaming tape unit on the market Right Now. It's a WangTek 150 and Creative Computers has it for ~$750. I have no experience with it other than that. > 6) Rewritable video disk technology is available for the Amiga > now, but the storage (per diskette) is no greater than this > magnetic drive, and the best price I've seen for the video > disk is around $9K, a bit steep for an unemployable graphics > [ ... material deleted ... ] you must not've been lookin at the right places for video disks. Active Circuits, for instance, has a 600 meg drive for ~ $5000 and media is around $100-$200 (check with 'em for details of course.). There's a couple others listed in Amazing's current product guide.. all in the same ball park. When Eric Lavitsky showed the drive A.C. is selling (this was at the NJ Amiga Users group meeting last december) he said he basically just plugged it in and it worked. You'd hafta type "diskchange" every time you swapped disks, for instance. -- <- David Herron, an MMDF weenie, <david@twg.com> <- Formerly: David Herron -- NonResident E-Mail Hack <david@ms.uky.edu> <- <- Sign me up for one "I survived Jaka's Story" T-shirt!