a218@mindlink.UUCP (Charlie Gibbs) (06/25/90)
In article <1990Jun25.132945.1778@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> tmb@davinci.acc.Virginia.EDU (Thomas M. Breeden) writes: >Does anyone have experience with adding an XT hardcard to the >Bridgeboard PC side that he/she could share? I dropped a 30-megabyte RLL hard card (Seagate ST-138R) into my 2286-equipped 2500. The autoboot partition on the Amiga hard drive was much too slow for any serious work, and would lose half the keystrokes I typed while the disk was active. The hard card works like a champ. In fact, the first time I powered it up the bridge board booted straight into the low-level format routine. The hard card takes up two slots, but there was room enough to put a multi-I/O card (2 serial ports, one parallel port) into what would otherwise be wasted space. >Pitfalls? Models to avoid? Product recommentations? There are a couple of quirks. First of all, the time doesn't come up properly when I boot the 2286. Although the date and hours are correct, the minutes and seconds are always set to zero. The time is correct in the bridge board's battery-backed clock (easily checked by entering the set-up screen with control-alt-escape). If I remove the hard card, the time comes up correctly. It's a bit of a pain to have to reset my time whenever I boot the bridge board, but I'd rather do that than lose my hard card. Another quirk, which may or may not be caused by the hard card (I haven't taken the time to check), is that the bridge board can't seem to remember a modified floppy drive configuration. In my system I've replaced the 1.2-megabyte 5 1/4-inch floppy drive with a 360K drive (I read and write 360K disks and don't want to risk errors by writing the 1.2-megabyte drive's narrower tracks down the middle of an original 360K drive's wide track). I've also added a 720K 3 1/2-inch drive for the exclusive use of the bridge board. If the system has been powered down for more than a few hours, it seems to forget that it has these new drives, and during start-up complains of a "Drive 0 configuration error." I have to enter the configuration screen and change the floppy configuration (which has reverted to a single 1.2-megabyte drive) to my 360K and 720K drives. There's one more thing I have to watch for with my new floppy configuration - the first time I access either floppy drive after a power-up or reboot, if there is a disc in the drive the bridge board will hang and require a reboot. This did not happen with the original 1.2-megabyte floppy drive, even with the hard card installed. The workaround is to leave the disk out of the drive until I get the "not ready" message; if I then insert the disk and retry, everything works fine until the next reboot. Again, a bit of a pain, but worth not having to pollute my environment with a machine that can run nothing but MS-DOS. >Thanks. You're welcome. >Tom Breeden >tmb@virginia.edu -->> Internet >tmb@virginia -->> BITNET Charlie_Gibbs@mindlink.UUCP If your nose runs and your feet smell, you're built upside-down.
bjc@smunews.UUCP (Betty J. Clay) (07/05/90)
In article <1990Jun25.132945.1778@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> tmb@davinci.acc.Virginia.EDU (Thomas M. Breeden) writes: >Does anyone have experience with adding an XT hardcard to the >Bridgeboard PC side that he/she could share? > >Pitfalls? Models to avoid? Product recommentations? > >Thanks. > >Tom Breeden I have the BSM KarDisk in my A2000 with the XT bridgeboard, and my husband has the same hardcard in his 2500 with AT Bridgeboard. These are 30M RLL drives, and they work well. We have had no problems with them - and they are not expensive. The 30M card is under $300 at SoftWarehouse. Betty ===================================================================== Betty Clay 76702.337@compuserve.com ====================================================================