Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Acill on July 17, 2016, 05:54:02 PM
-
I just received my UW PCI SCSI card compatible with my Mediator. I have the driver as well for it. Questions is, can this be used to boot my system disk or does it only work as a device for non bootable disks once the system comes up from another drive connected to the CSPPC or other internal SCSI device?
If it can boot, how does it know to use it before the driver is loaded from devs?
-
Not being familiar with the driver, I'd say it's a good bet you can't boot from it. But if it's ROMable and you can get it into memory from a cold start (i.e., Deneb Flash) or after a warm boot (one of those other startup-sequence ROM module utilities) then it would be bootable. I think the driver needs to be written in a particular way for those methods to work - hopefully it is.
-
Tried it and nope, can't boot off it. Seems rather pointless to use now. It was only 5.00 though.
-
on amiga as on every other platform at least a basic driver for a bootable device needs to be available at boot time, before that device needs to be accessed. on pc the drivers are in bios. on amiga in kickstart. except you have some bootable flash solution to keep your kickstart and extension modules, like deneb, you need to boot from a device supported by the genuine kickstart, likely ide or some autoconfig extension/card and let the system restart to access further devieces.
what concerns adaptec scsi pci, this is afair a third party development in an experimental stadium, a proof of concept, if you will. data transfer is very low, even in comparison to the devices available then. it wont suit you except the dev was still around and willing/able/open to improve this.
-
IIRC, the Adaptec card in the Mediator only goes around 2-3MB/s or so. The developer stated there wasn't any room for improvement as that's about as fast as any Mediator device transfers to the Amiga CPU that isn't the GFX card.
-
afair the transfer rate was well below 1 mb/s. mediator may involve some tricks routing data transfer via gfx card ram, which is up to 7mb/s, which is probably why the devloper has given up.