ianr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Ian ROWLANDS) (06/07/90)
After ringing some of the dealers around, I can now say why the XT and AT bridgeboards are so popular. I have been ringing around, for a friend in the country (where prices are $400 dearer), about an A200 system consisting of A2000, 2Mb ram, and 45Mb hard disk. At least half the dealers ask 'do you want a bridgeboard as well?'. The reason - it's the same price to put the HD on the bridgeboard as to get a HD and controller for the Amiga. Don't know about anybody else, but this seems crazy to me. Anybody else with similar experiences? Ian Ian Rowlands | ianr@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (main) Dept. of Electrical Engineering, | ianr@gondwana.ecr.mu.oz.au (including Computer Science) | ianr@munmurra.cs.mu.oz.au (to 7/90) University of Melbourne | (How can you have a funny quote in only 4 li
rar@auc.UUCP (Rodney Ricks) (06/08/90)
In article <4420@munnari.oz.au> ianr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Ian ROWLANDS) writes: > After ringing some of the dealers around, I can now say why the XT >and AT bridgeboards are so popular. >... >The reason - it's the same price to put the HD on the bridgeboard as to get >a HD and controller for the Amiga. Don't know about anybody else, but this >seems crazy to me. Not all hard disks are the same. What you would get for the Amiga would almost certainly be a SCSI controller and hard drive. For the bridgeboard, the hard drives that they are talking about are the less expensive, but slower, ST506 hard drives. From all that I have heard and seen, SCSI drives are much faster. Also, some people on the net seem to be having speed problems with the Amiga side using the hard drive on the bridgeboard. This is above and beyond the expected speed difference between SCSI and ST506 drives. So it seems that you'll pay for the bridgeboard solution with a significant loss of speed. > Ian Rodney -- "We may have come over here in different ships, but we're all in the same boat now." -- Jesse Jackson // \\ // Rodney Ricks, Morehouse College \/
plonka@carroll1.cc.edu (Dave Plonka) (06/14/90)
In article <32431@auc.UUCP> rar@auc.UUCP (Rodney Ricks) writes: [stuff deleted] >Not all hard disks are the same. What you would get for the Amiga would >almost certainly be a SCSI controller and hard drive. For the bridgeboard, the >hard drives that they are talking about are the less expensive, but slower, >ST506 hard drives. You are confusing a bus standard (SCSI), with a device standard (ST506.) It is very possible that a SCSI drive could have an ST506 controller on board.(In fact, I suspect some of the slower Seagate SCSIs may have just that.) In fact, SCSI drives must have some sort of controller on board. ESDI, IDE, ST-506, etc are controller or device standards. SCSI is a bus which requires a Host adapter, not a controller, the SCSI device does the rest. >From all that I have heard and seen, SCSI drives are much faster. Also, some >people on the net seem to be having speed problems with the Amiga side using >the hard drive on the bridgeboard. This is above and beyond the expected speed >difference between SCSI and ST506 drives. [stuff deleted] >Rodney True, for speed, (on the amiga side, that is) your best bet would be to configure the harddrive on the Amiga side. Dave. -- -----------------------------------------------------------------///-------- plonka@carroll1.cc.edu Dave Plonka /// uunet!marque!carroll1!plonka ARS: N9HZF \\\/// AMIGA -------------------------------------------------------------\XX/-----------
pnelson@hobbes.uucp (Phil Nelson) (06/15/90)
In article <32431@auc.UUCP> rar@auc.UUCP (Rodney Ricks) writes: >In article <4420@munnari.oz.au> ianr@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Ian ROWLANDS) writes: >> After ringing some of the dealers around, I can now say why the XT >>and AT bridgeboards are so popular. >>... >>The reason - it's the same price to put the HD on the bridgeboard as to get >>a HD and controller for the Amiga. Don't know about anybody else, but this >>seems crazy to me. > >Not all hard disks are the same. What you would get for the Amiga would >almost certainly be a SCSI controller and hard drive. For the bridgeboard, the >hard drives that they are talking about are the less expensive, but slower, >ST506 hard drives. Rodney is right, they are noticibly slower. I had one, and took it out after installing a 2091 with Quantum SCSI disk. Another problem with using the BridgeBoard disk for an Amigados partition, is that when anything goes wrong with MS-DOS, you lose access to the Amiga stuff too. Now that Microsoft has a zero bugs policy, maybe you don't need to worry about this possibility :-) I had a lot of problems with it, though. A lot depends on what you run on the the BridgeBoard. I just remembered another problem, the Amiga wants to access the disk async with MS-DOS activity, this was a big problem on my 2088 Bridgeboard, which lost characters on comm transfers, got errors on floppy transfers, etc. every time an access on the AmigaDOS partition occured at the wrong time. Things might not be so bad with the 2286. It's probably not as bad as I made it sound, I lived with it for a long time, but it is not a robust setup, in my opinion. Phil Nelson . uunet!pyramid!oliveb!tymix!hobbes!pnelson . Voice:408-922-7508 He who winks the eye causes trouble, but he who boldly reproves makes peace. -Proverbs 10:10