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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: commodorejohn on April 24, 2011, 01:07:08 AM
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I swear to God, if I ever meet the guy who invented this damn standard I'm going to throttle him. Here's the deal: I have an Amiga 3000 that came with:
* A 50MB Quantum Prodrive LPS as SCSI ID 1
* A 4.5GB Seagate Barracuda ST34572N as SCSI ID 4
I have an 850MB Quantum Trailblazer I'd like to replace the ProDrive with (currently set as SCSI ID 2,) but I want to copy the files from the ProDrive to the Trailblazer so's I don't lose the WB3.5 install the computer came with. Problem is, SCSI is Deep Magic and it seems like every time I get one thing working another stops.
Currently, it doesn't seem to recognize any of the drives alone or in combination, despite the fact that it all of them are in perfectly funcitonal condition. I've tried enabling and disabling termination on the Trailblazer (the others don't have a jumper for it,) I've tried fiddling around with SCSI IDs, I've tried swapping positions on the cable - nothing.
The hard drive LED on the computer does a very soft blink like it's being turned on very briefly and then off for longer periods, but it doesn't show any actual hard drive activity. (In some configurations it comes on solid and just stays that way.) The boot menu and HDToolbox don't show any of the drives as being connected besides DF0. The Barracuda goes through its normal spin-up and initial chatter, as does the Trailblazer, but the ProDrive does it spin-up and then a brief bit of quieter chatter than usual.
I am completely lost here. I don't understand anything about why SCSI does or doesn't work in whichever configurations - all I want is just to get the ProDrive and the Trailblazer to work together first, and then the Trailblazer and the Barracuda after. Can anybody help me figure this out?
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As someone who always seems to tear his hair out with regards to SCSI, I have one thing to say on this matter: Buddha IDE controller or FastATA if you have extra spare cash.
You can prep and format your new IDE drive after booting from your SCSI drive (with PFS3) and then copy the contents over and keep your SCSI drive as a backup.
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Not really an option at the moment - I've already dropped a bit more on this than I should right now, and besides, I've got these perfectly good drives that I'd hate to see go to waste.
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Not really an option at the moment - I've already dropped a bit more on this than I should right now, and besides, I've got these perfectly good drives that I'd hate to see go to waste.
Fair enough.
I just have draws full of IDE hard drives, CD/DVD ROM drives and ZIP drives. :)
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Aaaand after a full afternoon of dicking around with this, I discovered that the cable had popped out of the socket on the motherboard end D:
Only on SCSI could the symptoms be so inconclusive that I didn't even notice...
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Hi,
@CommodoreJohn,
I am a little groggy just woke up from a 3 hour nap, but here goes I will try to explain how a scsi system works.
First thing to remember is that a scsi system alway starts with the number 0 and on all Amiga systems ends with 6. That is 7 items that you can have hooked up at once, but scsi 0 is always the scsi card.
So here we go
scsi 0 = card
scsi 1 = scsi item 1
scsi 2 = scsi item 2
etc. etc to scsi item 6.
Now all your scsi items are in a chain that is they all hook up and go
scsi 0, scsi 1, scsi 2, scsi 3, scsi 4, scsi 5, scsi 6.
Now comes the difficult part, the last scsi item must be terminated (I usually set one scsi item as 6 and make sure it has the termination bars in it.
OK, first thing is get on the internet if you are using a computer that can get you there, type in the number of your drive (mine is a conner CFP2107S) download the spec sheet of your drive and keep it in a book or safe place. You will need this sheet badly, on there it tells you how to set up the drive numbers, where the terminators are etc.
Now like I said I always set one item up as scsi item 6, by scsi item I mean hard drives, scanners, draw tablets, CD/DVD players, scanners internal & external drives (hard drives or floppy) and this one is always terminated, now you can terminate at 4 or 3 but I like 6 because I have a zip drive that is either set at 1 or 6 and has the termination bars set in a settable switch and I ususally use this device as my 6 scsi.
Now what are termination bars, in my conner they are 2 little red bars by the ribbon cable plug on the top end of the hard drive circuit card. Like I said you will need your spec sheets on the item to find out where they are, if they are not the last item in your scsi string they must be pulled. Now when you pull them I have a freezer bag that I put them in and I mark the bag with from what scsi hard drive they came from and my bag is usually big enough to put my scsi spec sheet in with it. (I have about 15 scsi items). Now find a box and put your bag in there. Now if you don't have or lost these terminators, you can usually find them at Amigakit, or some of your electronic parts magazines.
Now:
Make the last item in the string have terminators (mine is usually set at 6)
Make sure all terminators are pulled from your middle drives.
Now your Commodore Mother boards are listed as scsi item 0, and in the back of the board are terminator strips, (you usually have to pull your Amiga 3000 apart to find them, Commodore had very poor engineers with the foresight of a piss ant, or else like every other thing they wanted to make it built so you would take it in and have them do it (but I think all their engineers just had the fore sight of a piss ant but I think all engineers are like that since I have to work with them every day)).
OK any questions just ask
smerf
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Well, I've actually got it working now - it was pretty much just the issue of the cable having popped. Bleargh...
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well, I really appreciated that SCSI guide :)
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Well, I've actually got it working now - it was pretty much just the issue of the cable having popped. Bleargh...
Hi,
OH YEAH!!
I forgot to mention always have your data cables plugged in and in external drives it also saves a lot of problems if it is plugged in to an outlet.
Just kidding
smerf
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Hi Smerf -
generally agree with your guide on SCSI except that the Amiga narrow type SCSI handles 8 devices not 7. The 8th device is the controller having SCSI ID of 7. As I recall Commodore always (sometimes?) set the hard drive to device 6.
I know the order doesn't matter but I always set my system hard drive to device 0 and the ZIP drive to device 6.
Amigoat
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Hi Smerf -
generally agree with your guide on SCSI except that the Amiga narrow type SCSI handles 8 devices not 7. The 8th device is the controller having SCSI ID of 7. As I recall Commodore always (sometimes?) set the hard drive to device 6.
I know the order doesn't matter but I always set my system hard drive to device 0 and the ZIP drive to device 6.
Amigoat
HMMM!
Didn't know that, I just go by the old Adaptec boards for the PC. I know the older new Adaptec boards go up the 16 devices with the board being 0.
Thanks for the info
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Hi Smerf -
generally agree with your guide on SCSI except that the Amiga narrow type SCSI handles 8 devices not 7. The 8th device is the controller having SCSI ID of 7. As I recall Commodore always (sometimes?) set the hard drive to device 6.
I know the order doesn't matter but I always set my system hard drive to device 0 and the ZIP drive to device 6.
Amigoat
If quickest booting is important, you might set the hard disk to the next highest priority after the host adapter, then the "last device" flag set in the drive's RDB to abort scanning the SCSI chain and skip straight to booting. It might require some experiementing - I've found not all systems scan the same direction. :-/ I can't recall which way the A3000 SCSI does it.
BTW - I love an Amiga with a good SCSI controller. Kicks the p*ss out of IDE any day. I used to copy CDs on my A2000 (TekMagic SCSI) between 2 PlexWriters, took maybe 4 or 5 minutes per disc and you could still read and write from the hard drive, run IBrowse or ShapeShifter, etc, like nothing else was going on. :-)
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just a side note, i had use scsi prefs ( off aminet) and delay the timing so it gave time for the hard drive to spin up before my a3k booted up.. then my hard drive worked.. (beside setting my terminations and id's right)
lost
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I've found not all systems scan the same direction. :-/ I can't recall which way the A3000 SCSI does it.
The 3k scans bottom up (0 through 6). I've got my HDD on ID1, so I can hook up a drive on ID0 and have it automounted w/o fiddling around.
btw: all narrow SCSI drives I've seen provide a way to turn on/off the termination option. Old drives require you to add/remove the terminator packs, newer drives with active terminators got a jumper.
However, more modern LVD/SE drives (U2W+) have no termination options any more.
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Hi commodorejohn,
For future reference.
See http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/SCSI/SCSIExamples.html
Regards, Michael
aka rockape
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Hi commodorejohn,
For future reference.
See http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/SCSI/SCSIExamples.html
Regards, Michael
aka rockape
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Some basic rules:
* Always have terminators at both ends of your physical bus-cable. No stubs!
Terminator--Device--Device--Device--Device--Terminator
* Check termination on the devices and their ID. Get hold of documentation. Ie NO device in the middle of the bus-cable may have their termination enabled.
* Beware of older devices that doesn't implement termination power with correct polarity. These devices has to have their bus-power disabled!
* Check that "parity enable" is set to the same on all devices. It's usually disabled.
* Controller is usually located at ID=7 but can vary.
* Highest ID have the highest priority. Except for wide-scsi where the priority is 7..0 and then 15..8.
* ID numbers only matters for software. So the numbering doesn't have to follow how the drives are physically attached.
Things that are nice about SCSI is that you can have many drives and the host interface can query them about just about anything. Sector ordering is consistent such that you can swap drives with friends. The electrical interface is consistent and electrically sound. SCSI drives usually have much higher build quality. Track-reordering makes it faster. It's even possible to let one controller boot from another controller if one wishes to do so ;), or have more than one controller use the same disc. On the host side, transfers are usually implemented with DMA and other efficient means etc..
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Hi commodorejohn,
For future reference.
See http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/SCSI/SCSIExamples.html
Regards, Michael
aka rockape
Hi,
@Rockape,
Why Thank You,
Even if I do know a little about scsi's this page will be worth copying and putting in my documentation drives for future reference.
At my age it is good to have reference's, after all I can't remember anything at my age.
smerf
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SCSI is so much better than IDE. It does not surprise me that the original posters problem turned out to be user error, as 9 times out of 10 it usually is. I have SCSI on almost all of my Amiga computers, even my A1200 w/Blizzard 1260 and have not had hardly any problems with any of them, except the SCSI wide controller on both of my Cyberstorm PPC accelerators. I am still working on getting them setup correctly so I can enjoy the speed that they provide above and beyond any Amiga IDE controller I have ever read about. (and I am with Smerf regarding having things written down, or printed out, as age surely has a way of blurring the memory)
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SCSI is so much better than IDE. It does not surprise me that the original posters problem turned out to be user error, as 9 times out of 10 it usually is. I have SCSI on almost all of my Amiga computers, even my A1200 w/Blizzard 1260 and have not had hardly any problems with any of them, except the SCSI wide controller on both of my Cyberstorm PPC accelerators. I am still working on getting them setup correctly so I can enjoy the speed that they provide above and beyond any Amiga IDE controller I have ever read about. (and I am with Smerf regarding having things written down, or printed out, as age surely has a way of blurring the memory)
I agree,SCSI is one of the best standards on amiga.Very few people realize or mention It uses very little cpu when transferring(on proper scsi controllers) compared to ide. FastATA just sucks the life out of a cpu especially in higher modes.SCSI is the most versitile thing on amiga and scsi on the accelerator is the best way to go. Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC UWscsi absolutely rocks when it comes to speed. SCSI is very simple to use once you learn a little about it.
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I agree,SCSI is one of the best standards on amiga.Very few people realize or mention It uses very little cpu when transferring(on proper scsi controllers) compared to ide. FastATA just sucks the life out of a cpu especially in higher modes.SCSI is the most versitile thing on amiga and scsi on the accelerator is the best way to go. Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC UWscsi absolutely rocks when it comes to speed. SCSI is very simple to use once you learn a little about it.
While I agree with you that SCSI is a far better standard when it come to speed on the Amiga when compared to IDE, you have to remember a couple of things though... :)
Firstly SCSI HD are obsolete, no one has manufactured SCSI HDs for at least the past 2 years now... :)
Secondly I reckon most folk will be using a desktop A500/A600 or A1200 in comparison to the amount of folk using Big Box Amigas (A3000/A4000 etc..) and in which case IDE is the easier route to go... :)
Gotta disagree with you on your comment that "FastATA sucks the life out of a CPU" on an 030 or 060 accelerated A1200 either loading or saving big files for example an 8.2GB DVD ISO there is no real slowdown in system performance that prevent or hinders you in any way from doing something else at the same time... :)
Not so true for the 4xEIDE Buffered Interface but then it's nowhere near as fast or good as the FastATA boards... :)
SCSI is fine for big box Amigas but when the remaining stock of SCSI HDs run out then you are going to be limited to second hand/ used HDs in future but the same will soon become true for IDE HDs as by the end of this year all the major manufacturers are phasing IDE HDs out too in favour of SATA... :(
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Firstly SCSI HD are obsolete, no one has manufactured SCSI HDs for at least the past 2 years now... :)
As is IDE... We live in SATA, USB & SAS world now.
btw: you can still buy new SCSI drives (Seagate, Toshiba).
Secondly I reckon most folk will be using a desktop A500/A600 or A1200 in comparison to the amount of folk using Big Box Amigas (A3000/A4000 etc..) and in which case IDE is the easier route to go... :)
Easier? Possibly. Better? No way. Especially on low power machine SCSI shines. Additionally, SCSI drives are (were) generally of higher quality than most IDE and may be expected to have a longer service life.
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As is IDE... We live in SATA, USB & SAS world now.
Easier? Possibly. Better? No way. Especially on low power machine SCSI shines. Additionally, SCSI drives are (were) generally of higher quality than most IDE and may be expected to have a longer service life.
I already pointed out that IDE was being phased out too... ;)
all the major manufacturers are phasing IDE HDs out too in favour of SATA... :)
As for Easier, yup we do agree on that but when it comes to which is better then I have to disagree there, you pay for what you get I've seen some pretty naff SCSI HDs in my time (noisy and prone to wearing out) mostly IBM ones back in the late 80's... :)
Just noticed your edit...
Yes you can still buy brand new SCSI drives but these are remaining stock nothing new has been manufactured for just over 2 years now... :)
As for going the SATA/USB route that manufacturers have opted for, pretty useless for folk that use the Amiga and the quality of them seems to me to be far worse than either SCSI or IDE... :(
Since June of last year I've had to put in my second brand new SATA 500GB HD in this iMac and after only 14 months I had to replace the SATA HD in my Hyundi Media Player/Recorder box... :(
If that's the quality of SATA drives I'll stick where possible with IDE and stock up on IDE drives to last me the rest of my days... :)
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SATA to SCSI adapters are the bees knees for big box miggies.
On my 1200 wedge I use an SDHC to 44pin IDE adapter which is both silent and fast. Cheap too.
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SATA to SCSI adapters are the bees knees for big box miggies.
On my 1200 wedge I use an SDHC to 44pin IDE adapter which is both silent and fast. Cheap too.
While I like the idea behind these solid state devices, you can hardly call them cheap in comparison to an HD when you need at least 500GB of space, cost a pretty penny to put one of those together (if you can even find one that can cope with that amount of SD cards that is)... ;)
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While I like the idea behind these solid state devices, you can hardly call them cheap in comparison to an HD when you need at least 500GB of space, cost a pretty penny to put one of those together (if you can even find one that can cope with that amount of SD cards that is)... ;)
A 4GB class 6 card is plenty big enough for the runt of my litter! :)
Can a CS060 Mk2 take a 2TB drive? My A4000 needs a drive upgrade.
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While I agree with you that SCSI is a far better standard when it come to speed on the Amiga when compared to IDE, you have to remember a couple of things though... :)
Firstly SCSI HD are obsolete, no one has manufactured SCSI HDs for at least the past 2 years now... :)
Secondly I reckon most folk will be using a desktop A500/A600 or A1200 in comparison to the amount of folk using Big Box Amigas (A3000/A4000 etc..) and in which case IDE is the easier route to go... :)
Gotta disagree with you on your comment that "FastATA sucks the life out of a CPU" on an 030 or 060 accelerated A1200 either loading or saving big files for example an 8.2GB DVD ISO there is no real slowdown in system performance that prevent or hinders you in any way from doing something else at the same time... :)
Not so true for the 4xEIDE Buffered Interface but then it's nowhere near as fast or good as the FastATA boards... :)
SCSI is fine for big box Amigas but when the remaining stock of SCSI HDs run out then you are going to be limited to second hand/ used HDs in future but the same will soon become true for IDE HDs as by the end of this year all the major manufacturers are phasing IDE HDs out too in favour of SATA... :(
Well, scsi hard drives are still manufactured today. Just because a person uses a A500 or 1200 doesnt mean he/she may not also use a blizzard with scsi.Were were talking about better not easier. There are thousands of servers world wide that use the older 68/80 pin drives. these are backward compatible.A quick search on ebay alone brings up tons as well as pricewatch and other places.even if they were'nt making them i have solved this with the 50 pin scsi to CF card readers which allow you to use Compact flash cards as scsi hard drives with no adapters.
I never said you couldn't do stuff,i was meaning the fast ATA uses alot of cpu time,especially in the higher modes..try it,kick it up in the higher pio4 or other modes and see what it uses on large transfers. This doesn't bother you because you haven't ever bothered to have your machine on the net. I actually use mine everyday for internet stuff-its not uncommon for me to be downloading gigs of stuff while browsing and such or .Now if its just gaming,then load times wont matter much.Try the blizzard 1260 with scsi in synchronous mode(up to 10MB/s) and compare the results with your fast ATA.
the 4x buffer boards of course are not worth mentioning,because they still rely on the stock ide.
SCSI is fine for ANY amiga,it really shines on the lower spec machines.
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A 4GB class 6 card is plenty big enough for the runt of my litter! :)
Can a CS060 Mk2 take a 2TB drive? My A4000 needs a drive upgrade.
The only file system I know that can cope with 2TB drive is SmartFileSystem which I use on my Towered A1200. I've used a 1TB drive on it with no problems but now use 2 500GB drives as I borrowed it's 1TB drive for my Media Player/Recorder box... :)
Dunno if the latest release of PFS3 can cope with drives this big but SmartFileSystem has in theory a 64TB limit but I don't know of anyone who's tried this... :)
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Well, scsi hard drives are still manufactured today.
Not according to CPC/Farnel or Seagate themselves, I've spoken to them on a few occasions in the past 2 years and according to them NO-ONE manufactures SCSI HDs anymore and the last production run was around March 2009 and Seagate's last Production run of IDE drives is scheduled for the end of this year in favour of SATA... :)
Give Seagate's technical dept a call and enquire yourself but I reckon the manufacturer should know best just what is still being produced... ;)
PS: I always run in PIO4 on the Amiga and even on reading/writing 8GB DVD ISO files there is no great slowdown in the performance of the Amigas multi tasking... :) (I can even got upto PIO5 with the DVD burners but they then become prone to errors when writing...;)
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S: I always run in PIO4 on the Amiga and even on reading/writing 8GB DVD ISO files there is no great slowdown in the performance of the Amigas multi tasking... (I can even got upto PIO5 with the DVD burners but they then become prone to errors when writing...
Interesting. What kind of results to you get with the FastATA running the RSCP (http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/RSCP) benchmark? My TekMagic for example approaches 10MB/s while leaving 98-99% CPU free.
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Interesting. What kind of results to you get with the FastATA running the RSCP (http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/RSCP) benchmark? My TekMagic for example approaches 10MB/s while leaving 98-99% CPU free.
Never heard of RSCP but I'll download it and see what results it gives... :)
It won't be anywhere near the results of using a SCSI drive (FastATA even on my 060 can only manage about 5.6MB/s) but that's fast enough for me and I't doesn't seem to hold me up from doing other things at the same time... :)
I'll run some tests with RSCP and let you know the results... :)
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Thanks Franko, no rush. I have an IDE-Fix Express in my A1200, it's true with the '060 you really don't notice the slowdown as much. I've never had a FastATA but IIRC the raw transfer rate is something like twice the IDE Express.
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Thanks Franko, no rush. I have an IDE-Fix Express in my A1200, it's true with the '060 you really don't notice the slowdown as much. I've never had a FastATA but IIRC the raw transfer rate is something like twice the IDE Express.
The question is, does your typical Amiga user notice this huge transfer rate difference when loading/moving/saving less than half a meg of data?
The answer is... no.
So, unless you're doing some serious stuff, a cheapo IDE adapter with cheapo IDE drives works wonders. :)
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Besides even if there's no more SCSI/IDE drives to get hold of. One can replace them the same way as has done with the floppy. Besides there's always the possibility to use a unix machine (PC) as a fileserver.
It's also possible to create a SCSI <-> S-ATA bridge with an FPGA like Spartan-6, even in their low-end versions.
In the end it's all about how the communication link is done. What kind of hardware assitance it uses (DMA) and time slots. Like idle priority, fast mem only, chip mem etc.. If one reads the technical specification it becomes obvious that U160 still beats S-ATA in reliability.
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Hello all,
I tried out the RSCP benchmark tool on my system and got these results using the default test settings:
Transfer rate : 7876 K/sec
Dhry/sec Idle : 62658
I'm running an Apollo1260/66/32MB with FastATA Mk-III in PIO5 on a IBM-DKLA-23240 (an old 3.25GB 2.5")
I know I'd get better results with a more modern drive...because it's such an old noisy drive - need to change it!
The other results from the test didn't work for me unfortunately (busy/idle and Dhry/sec busy) - I got empty readings of ZERO. I suppose the speed of the system confused it somewhat, it is after all a 20 year old program.
I've used this setup though with Audio Evolution 3 with 12 stereo tracks and 5 mono tracks (mostly playing back together, 17 in all, all tracks 16bit 44KHz - just checked my last project) and this is also being mixed via AHI in 16bit through to the clockport Prelude. If the FastATA was such a CPU eater then I doubt I'd be able to do the above, so I'm pretty sure the FastATA can't be too CPU hungry. Oh, I have to thank SFS too...poor old FFS was pretty much useless for this task. Thank you ELBOX, thank you Smart Filesystem.
;)
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I've used this setup though with Audio Evolution 3 with 12 stereo tracks and 5 mono tracks (mostly playing back together, 17 in all, all tracks 16bit 44KHz - just checked my last project) and this is also being mixed via AHI in 16bit through to the clockport Prelude. If the FastATA was such a CPU eater then I doubt I'd be able to do the above, so I'm pretty sure the FastATA can't be too CPU hungry. Oh, I have to thank SFS too...poor old FFS was pretty much useless for this task. Thank you ELBOX, thank you Smart Filesystem.
;)
I haven't run the test myself yet but I do agree with you that folk claiming that FastATA is CPU hungry are way of the mark... :)
Been using FastATA for years now and working on big 4 to 8GB single file sizes and I've never had any bother with it slowing my Amiga down on either an 030 or 060... :)
SFS is the best Amiga file system for large HDs and large files too in my opinion... ;)
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The "0" only indicates there is no free CPU during the transfer - as expected with the FastATA, since the CPU must shovel all the data around itself.
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The "0" only indicates there is no free CPU during the transfer - as expected with the FastATA, since the CPU must shovel all the data around itself.
I seriously doubt that the ZERO is a valid result though, because if that was the case, if it was truly ZERO, then the whole system would freeze whilst it was performing the test. ie mouse pointer would freeze, Workbench would freeze...I wouldn't be able to open windows or do anything whilst running the test. If it was ZERO then even navigating my drawers on Workbench whilst playing an aiff song would show a slow down in Workbench everytime it had to buffer....and I've never noticed any such slowdown.
Then again, I might be totally wrong...even so, the FastATA enabled me to use Audio Evolution to it's full on the 68k, as did SFS.
I'd like to see more results from a variety of systems, and some results with 030 and 040 CPU's.
BTW, I used to copy scsi hard drives one to the other using squirrelscsi and it wasn't all that bad....it was quite good! I do like SCSI! :laughing:
I would have liked to have used the blizzard1260 and it's scsi but I found the blizzard runs too hot to be in a standard desktop case due to it's underside mounted CPU, and I don't have the room to setup a towered amiga. Also the Prelude connects to the little backplate where the scsikit connection would be.
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I seriously doubt that the ZERO is a valid result though, because if that was the case, if it was truly ZERO, then the whole system would freeze whilst it was performing the test. ie mouse pointer would freeze, Workbench would freeze...I wouldn't be able to open windows or do anything whilst running the test. If it was ZERO then even navigating my drawers on Workbench whilst playing an aiff song would show a slow down in Workbench everytime it had to buffer....and I've never noticed any such slowdown.
It actually is close enough to zero. Another test, watch the Executive meter while copying a large file between partitions. On native A4K IDE, it eats nearly 99% CPU during the transfer. FastATA is no different, there's no controller chip with DMA access to accelerator fastram.
The system doesn't slow to a crawl because the OS can multitask. (This is why the RSCP benchmark mentions mouse movement - it will steal CPU time and might alter the result.) But to transfer continuously at it's maximum rate, it will utilize almost all CPU time. It has to, because the CPU is doing all the work of transferring! A good DMA SCSI controller will do the same while utilizing much less CPU, because the data transfer is handled by a dedicated processor which has direct access to fastram. (The CPU sets the parameters of the transfer, but doesn't do the work.)
BTW, I used to copy scsi hard drives one to the other using squirrelscsi and it wasn't all that bad....it was quite good! I do like SCSI! :laughing:
The Surf Squirrel doesn't count, AFAIK there is no DMA path from the PCMCIA port to accelerator fastram. So it's PIO only and equally CPU-intensive.
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The Surf Squirrel doesn't count, AFAIK there is no DMA path from the PCMCIA port to accelerator fastram. So it's PIO only and equally CPU-intensive.
Yes, that's true - but still a great little piece of kit. Used my 1200 with a scsi cd-rom drive via the squirrel and back in those days it was the best option unless you had a blizzard scsi. I never had the Surf Squirrel - mine was the standard (without the serial port).
A piece of hardware I really would like to see again is the clockport expander for the 1200/600. I hope that Jens is reading this... LOL. :lol: