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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Ral-Clan on February 14, 2013, 12:26:30 AM
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Hi, Sysinfo shows that my SupraDrive 500XP gets 638,856Kb / sec. This seems a little on the slow side to me. I've never really used this hardware before (only an A2091 in an A2000 before). Does this seem okay to you guys?
I realise the SupraDrive controller card only does PIO mode transfers, but a half-meg a second still seems slow.
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Sysinfo gives nonsense results on drive speeds...
about half way down the page shows my findings ;)
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=61854&page=15
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Okay, can anyone recommend a reliable tool for measuring SCSI hard drive transfer rates?
EDIT: Ahhh. I see...."RawSpeed".
Thanks.
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Yup!
http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/RSCP
I realised how bad sysinfo was after I overclocked my scsi controller to double the speed... and sysinfo still reported the same speed :p
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SysInfo shows right at 2 megabytes per second on my A500+ with a GVP A500+8. How much fast ram do you have. I have 2 of the A500+8 controllers, one of which hass 4 meg, and one which has 8 meg. The one with 8 meg shows about 2 megabytes per second, the one with 4 meg shows about half that on the transfer speed. I used a couple of drive speed tests that were recommended on another thread somewhere, and got the same results. I am using SysInfo 4, and I don't know if it is any better than the old SysInfo or not, but at least on mine, it was pretty much the same as the other drive tests. I may have just got lucky or something :)
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Well, RAWSpeed shows about the same results as SysInfo 4 does.....about 650,000 Kbytes per second.
That seems pretty bad.
I also tried the other SCSI Speed test linked to in that other threat and got the same results.
The other weird thing is that CPU availability goes down to about 0% to 2% during SCSI activity. That really seems wrong.
I have an Amiga 500 with 2MB Chip RAM (Megachip + Fatter Agnus), 2MB Fast RAM (on the Supra500XP) OS3.1.
The drive is a 2.1GB Quantum. Maybe it needs termination or some jumper change.
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The fact the CPU has 0% available means you're probably never going to get any faster transfers, the CPU is just maxed out.
In my tests, I'm running a 36Mhz 030.
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Mine is a standard, unaccelerated A500+. I do have the 68010 processor in mine, but that really doesn't make any difference. Try boosting your fast ram. If that doesn't work, it is still better to have more fast ram. Like I said, I only got about 1 megabyte/sec on my spare A500+8, which has only 4 mb of fast ram. I get 2 megabytes/second from the one with 8mb of fast ram. I don't know if that the extra fast ram is the reason, for sure, though. Are there any chips in the Supra, that might have a later version. I know the A2091 has problems without the 6.6 roms, and it is even better to have the 7.0 roms. Also, there is a later version of the controller chip that helps out. I'm not sure about the Supra, as I don't have one. Good luck with it. I'm sure someone on here will have an idea of what to try. Lots of knowledge on here.
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Mine is a standard, unaccelerated A500+. I do have the 68010 processor in mine, but that really doesn't make any difference. Try boosting your fast ram. If that doesn't work, it is still better to have more fast ram. Like I said, I only got about 1 megabyte/sec on my spare A500+8, which has only 4 mb of fast ram. I get 2 megabytes/second from the one with 8mb of fast ram.
Interesting that there's such a difference considering they are very similar products (A590 and Supra500XP). Maybe I will go up to 8MB RAM with this.
I don't know if that the extra fast ram is the reason, for sure, though. Are there any chips in the Supra, that might have a later version.
Yeah, I have the latest ROM chip - AMAB6.
Do you know how much CPU usage your A590 takes during transfers?
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No, I've never really looked at that. What do you use for the CPU meter, TinyMeter? I can look if you want, just let me know what you use. Also, the A500+8 that I use is a GVP, so I'm not sure what the differences are in the different brands..
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Test with this speed measuring tool and please let me know what it says for CPU.
http://aminet.net/package/util/moni/RSCP
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Try a Trumpcard Professional by IVS.
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I used to have one years ago. It has no RAM expansion (without finding the special add-on card). It's also PIO.
Supra500XP is a good sidecar (RAM + SCSI). It's just a little slow - not unbearably so - heck I would hardly notice if I wasn't seeing the better specs on the other sidecards mentioned above.
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Speed seems about right. I have the latest rom in mine: amab6. With my csa-mmr 030, I get about 1.2mb/sec with sysinfo using a compactflash/scsi bridge. The 500xp my not be the fastest controller, but its the most compatible. I've never had any problems - and I've had al sorts of setups. The gvp controller is not as compatible...
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I will run that software and check cpu usage. Will probably be tomorrow evening, but I will let you know.
I had originally posted that I had never had any issues with GVP compatibilty, but I actually remembered, I have. On my 030 combo card, there is an issue with using Zorro ram expansions while using the built in SCSI controller on the combo card. If I use an external ram card, I get gurus sometimes. But I have 13 mb on the combo so it really isn't an issue.
I also bought a HC+8 on ebay one time, cheap, that the seller said was bad, so I took a chance that it was just a bad autoboot or something, but I lost, the card itself was bad.
I have a SupraRAM card, and from the ones I've had, it is my favorite RAM expansion. But, I do like the GVP cards. I've never had any experience with the Supra SCSI cards. I will run the CPU test, and get back with you.
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I have a SupraRAM card, and from the ones I've had, it is my favorite RAM expansion. But, I do like the GVP cards. I've never had any experience with the Supra SCSI cards. I will run the CPU test, and get back with you.
Okay, thanks. I am interested to see the results.
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On my A500, similar spec to yours, I also get just over 1 meg a second according to SysInfo. 68010/WB 3.1 and one of the GVP A500 HD+ units with 4 megs onboard and the latest 4.15 ROM. It's an old 85 meg drive though, wonder how much drive cache and actual drive performance affect this? I.e., if you stuck in a screaming 15K RPM drive with a ton of cache memory, think the A500 would benefit any?
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I used to have one years ago. It has no RAM expansion (without finding the special add-on card). It's also PIO.
All the Trumpcard 500 Professionals that I used had the 4MB RAM expansion installed. I never measured the drive speed back in those days. It seemed fast enough so I never worried about it.
If I had cared about drive speed back then (which I did) then I would have bought an A3000 (which I did) :) A3000 has a fast and beautiful and smoooth SCSI controller which was massively superior to the Trumpcard Professional in my A2000/9MB/68000 machine and much faster than the IDE controller in my A4000/18MB/040.
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OK, so I ran the test on my A500+. Here are the results:
read speed: 2.178 MegaBytes/Sec.
Busy/Idle Percentage: 70%
I tried with several combinations of settings, and using 16K netted a little slower read speed of around 1.5 MegaBytes/Sec. and Busy/Idle % of 58%. But the 128K and 512K were both the 2.178 MegaBytes/Sec. and Busy/Idle % of 70%.
I hope this helps you out. It looks like SysInfo 4 was pretty close, as it showed just shy of 2.1 MegaBytes/Sec. on the read speed.
One more thing, I am not sure what file system you are using. I am using PFS3. I think FFS or SFS might be a little slower, but someone else on here can answer that question for sure.
Good luck, and if I can help anymore, let me know.
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OK, so I ran the test on my A500+. Here are the results:
read speed: 2.178 MegaBytes/Sec.
Busy/Idle Percentage: 70%
Wow! You are getting really, really good transfer rates (quadruple my Supra 500XP).
I guess the A590 is just better than the Supra500XP. That's strange, because I thought both used PIO (Programmmed I/O) transfer modes, which are known to be fairly slow.
You are also getting pretty good CPU performance (low load on CPU).
By the way, how is that Chinese RGB->VGA converter you are using? Is it as good as a flicker fixer (i.e. Indvision?) or is there some blurriness added?
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It works great for me. I don't do a lot of gaming, though, but have played some games using it. I liked it so much I bought 4 more of them. I am in the process of building cables for my Apple II collection to use them with the GBS. I've got one cable made, and the Apples look fine as well. There is a little artifact around the mouse when moved, but barely noticeable. Like I said, I'm not a big gamer, so not much experience with them playing games. I have an Indy ECS in my A2000HD.
On the SCSI thing, yeah, it does really well. By the way, it isn't an A590, it is one of these http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/search.pl?product=Impact+A500+HD8%2B+Series+II&company=gvp
Like I said before, I have 2 of these, and one only has 4mb of ram, and I only get around 1 MegaByte/Sec. on it. I'm not sure if it is the extra fast ram that makes the difference or not. I also have 1.5 mb of chip ram, as this is a 500+, and uses the trapdoor as chip memory.
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I wonder if my mask / maxtransfer settings could be wrong?
Mine are set to MASK 0xfffffe, Maxtransfer 0xffffff
Do you know what yours are set to?
If it's not these settings then I'll just accept this is a slower piece of equipment by design.
As for the scan-doubler thing - I'm glad you're happy with it. I'd mostly be using it for non-games, too: i.e. DPaint - where sharpness is pretty important.
I read on another thread that you like it, even though you consider yourself pretty picky. But on other threads people have been saying it's terrible. What contradictory information I'm finding. I guess the only way for me to tell for sure would be to find a high-res screen capture or video of it in use on an amiga somewhere online.
I found this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBvJcQj44tw
and it looks rather GOOD! (i.e. text is sharp enough) ---- but the guy won't hold the damn camera still enough. None of the videos of Amigas using this device on YouTube are good enough quality to judge (either shakey cam or low resolution cameraphone).
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what file system are you using? Is it FFS, SFS, or PFS?
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what file system are you using? Is it FFS, SFS, or PFS?
It's just the standard FFS.
But reading the specs of your sidecar vs. mine --- I'm guessing yours can do DMA accesses which the Supra cannot. I'm guessing that's why yours is so much faster and less draining on the CPU.
Also, the design of the GVP is so nice in that it matches the A500. Why Commodore could not do as nice a job I often wonder.
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Just as another reference. I just tested my SupaDrive 500XP with SysInfo V4.0 in two different A500's and I was getting 570,705 Bytes/sec.
The SupaDrive was fitted with a 49MB Quantum LP52S hard drive, using Fast File System, it had 1MB fitted onboard and 512KB in the trap door.
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One thing you might try, is to use PFS. I don't know if that will up the speed or not, but it is what I use. I used SFS before that.