RapidRoad USB Review

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

RapidRoad USB Review

Received my RapidRoad USB module from AmigaKit yesterday, installed it today.

Hardware: It probably took longer to unscrew my case than it did to install. I purchased the A1200/clockport compatible version since it was the only one in stock at the time. This also gives me the option if I want to install it in an A1200 or other system at a later date. The plastic cover for these other applications is nicely designed, and attached with two nylon screws for easy removal. After removing its cover the board fit snugly into the designated port on my X-Surf 100. Install was unambiguous; board can only fit one way so that's the way I put it. I chose to run the optional 4-pin power wire as well, this gives the ability to output up to 1.5A instead of the standard 500ma through each port. Figured this might come in handy if I want to charge my phone or other devices more quickly. I ran the power wire beneath my other cards, if I'd really wanted to "fancy it up" I could've run it all the way under the motherboard, but that's a whole lot more screws to remove. ;-)

Software: I downloaded the 4.5 version of Poseidon from wiki.icomp.de. I couldn't find the link at first, that's because it's listed at the top under "If you are a RapidRoad customer, please click here". It's not listed under the "Products" heading, where I expected to find it. Install went smoothly; it detected my previous version of Poseidon and upgraded it. Removed my old thylacine.device and added rapidroadxs100usb.device and it fired right up. No issues with the software.

I previously had a Thylacine USB card and found it slow to the point of being unusable. The system would grind to a halt even trying to detect a device. I think this was due to the Zorro II bus, many other users have reported that card works well in ZIII systems. Whether it's by better design or software improvements, the RapidRoad had no such issues. As one test I plugged a generic Dell USB keyboard in. The RapidRoad immediately detected it and Poseidon played its "happy charm". By comparison, I plugged the same keyboard into a 3.33GHz PC sitting right next to my Amiga. Despite being approximately 100x the speed (in terms of MHz, anyway), my 33MHz A2000 detected the device much more quickly than this modern PC.

I tested several devices with the hardware:

Generic Dell USB mouse: detected fine, lights up, although I'm an idiot and can't figure out where in Poseidon I need to select the option to use a USB mouse instead of a standard mouse? So I couldn't actually use it. No big deal, I already have a modern PS/2 optical mouse with scrollwheel connected via my Cocolino, but if someone could point me in the right direction for the setting that would be helpful. Surprisingly I couldn't find much on Google or the Help manual for Poseidon.

Generic Dell keyboard: plugged in, detected quickly and was immediately able to type. I noticed the "numlock" function doesn't work (i.e., I can't toggle between numeric keypad and arrow keys). This might be down to a learning curve or configuration issue?

USB hub: connected one port of the X-Surf 100 to the four-port USB hub built into my monitor. Was able to access the additional ports with no issues.

Phone: I plugged my Galaxy Nexus smart phone into the hub. Poseidon immediately recognized it, but didn't know what to do with it. No surprise there. It was able to charge it, at least, which is probably what I'll use it for most. Just charging my phone while I'm sitting there. I'm sure if I poked around more I could probably figure out some way of accessing it as a mass storage device?

Digital camera: Plugged in a Canon digital camera that I had lying around the office. Poseidon detected it and I was able to browse the files on it. Multiview couldn't show the pictures but that may be because they were too big (7.1 megapixels). Will have to experiment further with lower res shots, I see no other reason why this wouldn't work.

Flash drive: This was the big winner here, and I am still amazed at how well it worked. A little bit of back-story: I have a FAT32-formatted SD card that I access through my card reader to transfer large files back & forth with my PC. I still recall what a PITA it was getting that working right. So to test a flash drive I scrounged through my spare parts bin, the first one I found was a 16GB cheap-o Adata model. Plugged it into my PC and saw it was formatted as FAT32 (I assume NTFS wouldn’t work), with a few hundred .jpg pictures loaded on it from an old project. So without any setup work, I plugged it in to my RapidRoad. Device was immediately detected and an icon showed up for it on the desktop. I was able to access the entire 16GB of data, and copied and saved a few files to it as a test. I ran it through several speed tests with SysInfo and SysSpeed, and was getting a solid 1.5-2.1MB/sec transfer rate. This is faster than my FAT32-formatted SD card, and nearly as fast as my PFS-formatted "600x" 8GB CF card that I use as my main hard drive. On that I'm limited by the SCSI speed of my GeForce '040.


Overall, I am very, very impressed by this little card. I'm so used to Amiga's always having problems with devices larger than 4GB, or partitions larger than 2GB, and having to spend hours mucking about with file systems (PFS was a huge challenge for me) that being able to just plug in a 16GB flash drive and have it instantly work makes this card well worth the money I spent on it.

Rating: 10/10, I look forward to testing more USB devices in the future and learning more about configuring the Poseidon software for optimal use.


On a side note, I really, really need some of those 16MB GVP SIMM's for my GeForce '040 board. I know someone on Amibay cloned them last year but I missed out on the run. Why isn't someone else making these? 64MB of 32-bit fast ram would be so much better than 16MB.


System specs at time of testing: Amiga 2000, 2MB Chip|24MB Fast|33MHz 68040|3.9 + BB1-4|Indivision ECS + GVP Spectrum|Mechware card reader + 8GB CF|AD516|X-Surf 100|Cocolino|SCSI CD-RW

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Thanks guys.  I tried it with a different mouse and it worked fine.  Guess it just didn't like one of my cheap-o mice, good thing I've got a drawer full of em!  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

thanks for the great review Mike! I've got mine still in the box and can't wait to have some spare time to get her in my 1200D

Sweet!  Post some speed results when you can.  I'd be curious to know how ZII via the X-Surf 100 compares to a clockport connector on an A1200.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Nice review. I was very curious to hear how it works in Zorro II mode, 2mb/sec is a nice speed.

I tested it recently for my review on A1200/A4000:

http://www.fitzstevesamigaworld.co.uk/?p=253

I'm going to be testing out a USB Sound Card this weekend, just arrived from eBay yesterday

PS. Very nice A2000 you have there by the way.

 Thanks!  Just saw your speed test results.  It looks like ZII via X-Surf 100 is about 2-3 times as fast as A1200 clockport, and ZIII about 3 times as fast as that.  Impressive speed, all around!

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

@gizmo350 - once again we are neck-and-neck for upgrading our A2000's.  I'll get you someday, haha! :roflmao:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Thanks @fitzsteve! Could you post the exact model of sound card you tried, in case others want to attempt to duplicate your efforts?


I hardly ever listen to mp3's on my Amiga, but as a test I've played a few mp3's off flash drives through Amplifier and my AD516 card. Works okay, a bit of popping, not any different from playing them off a hard drive/CF card. Best playback results I've gotten come from playing an mp3 back directly from RAM:. USB overhead when streaming music files from a flash drive seems minimal.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I have one of those. Your saying it would work with my A1200 if I got rid of subway and got RapidRoad?

How fast is your A1200?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Can anyone who has popupmenu.library and reqattack and magic menu installed test if the menu that opens when you right click inside a requester (for example the requester that opens when you choose "about" from "Workbench" menu) gets stuck using a usb mouse connected to RR?

I have "popupmenu.library" version 10.10.1 and MagicMenu version 2.35 installed on my system. I have no problems right-clicking on any menu items with USB mouse.  Mouse works seamlessly with any Workbench-compatible programs I've tried so far.  Obviously doesn't work with hard-coded WHDLoad games, however.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If they could only somehow "re-target" USB devices to work on old games I would be in heaven. Would be nice to use a USB analogue stick with fight sims.

 
 How about a USB --> PS/2 --> 9-pin adapter?  Yeah, not exactly what you had in mind, I know.  

Adding to my list, I can now confirm that RapidRoad works great with a Microsoft Wireless Desktop 5000 (wireless mouse and keyboard combo).  Plugged it in, popped up, worked fine no issues.  Although it felt a bit weird using a wireless keyboard and mouse on my Amiga for the first time.  

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Adding to my list of compatible devices:

- Garmin Nuvi 1300 (binded to massstorage.class, was able to charge device and access its file system).

I'd like to try a USB printer at some point. I assume that to have any chance at working it would need to support Postscript output. I've got 17 printers around the office but all are big workgroup-class devices connected via Ethernet, not sure if I have any USB printers anywhere, haha.

Side note, it looks like Poseidon uses a small amount of chip memory for something? With my graphics card I usually have 97% free. Doing a fresh boot and then opening nothing but Poseidon/Trident Prefs I notice that goes down to 95%. At a quick glance with SysInfo and Scout I couldn't find the cause. All my libraries/devices/etc. appeared to be loaded in 32-bit fast. Odd, but no big deal.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Instead, plug in an ASIX Ethernet dongle and access your network printers that way; it gives me a way to connect to my HP inkjet, Dell WorkGroup and cheap B/W laser printer.:laugh1:

Since my Amiga is on the same domain I think I could just access them straight over the network, without a dongle.  Only two things (1) I have no need of a printer on my Amiga, and (2) I still haven't had time, haha.    But yes, I'd like to test a printer connected to RapidRoad, just for purposes of compatibility testing.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Try this:

Choose About from Workbench menu. The about window will appear in ReqAttack style. What happens when you right click that about window using usb mouse connected to RR USB?

Here a menu pops up but gets stuck and the only way to close that menu is either using the real Amiga mouse or pressing escape from keyboard.

I'm running the other two you mentioned but not ReqAttack. I vaguely recall the name, think I ran it back in the '90s, is that the one that adds animations to requesters? It's probably a nasty hack and the source of your problems.

When I open the right-click menu and do Workbench -> About, I get the standard 3.9 ROM menu and an OK box. No issues.

At a guess I'd say your problem is software, not hardware related. Try disabling some of your hacks and patches and see if problem continues.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

A fast 060 might be able to push it, assuming the clockport has enough bandwidth. Shame I got rid of my 060 lol.

I don't think the clockport has nearly enough bandwidth. Probably have better luck with a MAS Player...

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Tried another device tonight. My NTFS-formatted, GPT-partitioned 4TB external hard drive. It popped right up, but course Poseidon couldn't figure out what the heck to do with it. I don't think I'll hold that against it.

In my defense, I was really tired when I tried this, haha. :lol:

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

Would a rapid road fit inside an Amiga 500?

LOL.  You can make "anything" fit, with enough work.  But it's not designed for it.   You'd need to start by adding more RAM, a faster processor, and find some way of adding a clockport connector.