SCSI Wuzzy Help! ACard How big large can I have a Scuzz?

[leirbag28]

Alright seems people have different answers........I need CLEAR answers and some help.


I have an A1200 with Blizzard 1240 and the SCSI kit attachment.

I want to a A SUPER DUPER fast SCSI and Largest Humanly possible.

1. WHat kinds of SCSI hardrives can I use?

2. Whats the biggest size?

3.Where can I get them??

4. Can I use SCSI III and UltraWide SCSI? and whaever other SCSI out there exists?
5. Don't I need some kind of adaptor to fit it onto the Parrallel port looking connector of the Blizzard SCSI?
6. WHy the heck do they have so many different SCSI connectors?
7. Anyone agree with me how stupid this is?

8. What of this ACard thing?  I just heard about it?

9. Isnt the ACard too damn expensive ($100) to justify using a IDE on a SCSI port?
10. Even though SCSI harddrives are more expensive, still it would be cheaper than buying an ACard and an IDE of the same capacity???




Quote: People die for lack of knowledge

(I say this because its amazing to me how little Amiga developers advertise...........they shoot themselves in the foot bigtime for not making their products aware to people, especially in such a small market, plus they need to explain them more.  The DELPHINA for example should NOT be sold as Merely a "Sound Card"  that sounds stupid in the Amiga world (not that the card is a dumb idea) because Amigans dont think they need a sound card............It should be Clearly stated as a 16bit sound decoder and MP3 decoder............Now that I would buy!  anyways..............ADVERTISE ADVERTISE, and spread the word Oh You Developers! Give details up the WAZOOO about your product.  You have to!

Anyways ignore all that............someone answer my questions please.

[Piru]

. WHat kinds of SCSI hardrives can I use?

All of them, assuming you can physically connect them to your interface.

2. Whats the biggest size?

2TB (using SCSI direct and READ10).

0. Even though SCSI harddrives are more expensive, still it would be cheaper than buying an ACard and an IDE of the same capacity?

No.

[Zac67]

>I have an A1200 with Blizzard 1240 and the SCSI kit attachment.

I guess this means Fast Wide SCSI?

>1. WHat kinds of SCSI hardrives can I use?

All single ended (SE) or LVD/SE ones. No (old) HVD. Drives with SCA port need an adapter.

>2. Whats the biggest size?

AFAIK the largest SCSI drives are 300 GB. You can also use a SCSI-SCSI RAID controller to 'bundle' several drives to a single logical one.

>3.Where can I get them??

Local dealer, mail order, ...
Probably starts ~$350 US.

>4. Can I use SCSI III and UltraWide SCSI? and whaever other SCSI out there exists?

Yes, you can use Fast Wide, UltraWide, U160 and U320. Even SAS if you can find an adapter.

>5. Don't I need some kind of adaptor to fit it onto the Parrallel port looking connector of the Blizzard SCSI?

Dunno what it looks like, but a wide SCSI port/cable fits all drives from Fast Wide to U320.

>6. WHy the heck do they have so many different SCSI connectors?

The standard has grown over some decades and is very versatile.

>7. Anyone agree with me how stupid this is?

Yes.

>8. What of this ACard thing?  I just heard about it?

It bridges/adapts ATA/IDE devices to be used with a SCSI host adapter.

>9. Isnt the ACard too damn expensive ($100) to justify using a IDE on a SCSI port?

Yes. If you don't need a TB drive, just get the SCSI variant.

>10. Even though SCSI harddrives are more expensive, still it would be cheaper than buying an ACard and an IDE of the same capacity???

SCSI drives are usually 'enterprise' class: faster, longer life, but possible more noisy than 'consumer' IDE drives, esp the higher RPM types with 10k or even 15k. Apart from that, a 1 TB IDE drive plus ACard is cheaper and available.

[spihunter]

Isnt the SCSI on the blizzrd 040 only SCSI II?. I think that maxes out at 10 MB/s

[Piru]

@spihunter

What! You dare to question the sensibility of adding U320 15krpm drive to SCSI-2 controller? ;-)

Anyhoo, still that 10MB/s is without any CPU load, so it beats the excrement out of any IDE...

[leirbag28]

Thanks for the replys!  But I still need help and clarity.

If you look behind your Amiga.........look at the parrallel port...........this is pretty much exactly what the Blizzard SCSI module has as its cable connector for a SCSI drive.

First I need a 120GB SCSI HD..I will be satisfied with that....heck even an 80gig.  THen I need an adaptor to plug it into my SCSI Blizzard thingy (this is doable right)

and next, You say all SCSI drives will work?  well I need to know 100% for sure that a Modern SCSI will work ( iknow it might not fully support the higher speeds but im sure its faster than IDE?)

SO where Can I buy the HArddrive, and the adaptor?

I need blazing fast loading on my A1200. Im already happy about having 256mb of RAM, Now I need to load Video into it as fast as possible for displaying. I will be constantly swapping videos in and out of RAM for a cointinous amount of hours.........By Video I mean Large Full screen Overscan animations of 19mb to 80mb in size!

[Zac67]

@spihunter

You're right - the Blizzard SCSI modules look more like narrow SCSI which is 10 MB/s max. Needs more than 24 hours to read through 1 TB... :roll:

[spihunter]

@leirbag28,

You can adapt to just about any SCSI drive with that connector. The trick is finding the adaptors to pull it off.

I have a whole box of them at home that I'll go through and see if I can help. I had adapted that same connector to a harddrive on my old Cobra/030 board.

I have a 10K 146GB SCSI drive that I could sell you for pretty cheap, but like Piru said it would go nowhere near its native speed on that board!

Still faster then Your IDE though
 :-)

[ddniUK]

Hmmm full screen video on an 040???
Even running them from RAM you will be looking at a slideshow...

Good luck though!

[leirbag28]

@ddniUK


Nope!  runs at 30fps or 60fps in SCALA MM300 anim8L format. I will post a video on YouTUBE soon with a Dancer being ChromaKeyed.  Also the Animation is HAM8

would run even faster if it was DCTV 736x240

[ddniUK]

Nice one, good luck with it!

My interpretation of video was based on .avi or .mpg decoding etc..... :-)  

[leirbag28]

@spihunter


PM SENT


Isnt the Blizzard SCSI module supposed to be Fast?

is it faster than the normal 7200 rpm's on an IDE?

[HammerD]

I have several ACARD scsi to ide adapters (they work great).  On my Cyberstorm MK3 with a half decent IDE hard drive or a fast UDMA Compact Flash card (I have a 2GB one on there right now), I can get 19.9MB/sec using the "diskspeed" program from the SFS.LHA archive.  The command syntax is:

Diskspeed read  

What I do is copy diskspeed to c: then cd to the drive I want to benchmark.  Then just type Diskspeed read from the shell and it will do a quick benchmark for you.

Can anyone beat 19.9 MB/sec ?  

That is what I measured using a SFS partition on my Cyberstorm MK3 66MHz 060 with a 2 GB Compact flash card - supporting UDMA and 40MB/sec and an acard scsi-to-ide adapter.

Of course I am talking Classic Amiga here...but on AmigaONE you can get over 40MB/sec.  Still close to 20MB/sec is very good for classic I think !

[rockape]

Hi,

see http://wonkity.com/~wblock/SCSI/SCSIExamples.html

"It seems that the SCSI bus is one of the most misunderstood aspects of connecting hard drives and other peripherals to the A4000 (or, for that matter, any other Amiga model). This section of the guide is an attempt to provide some simple examples of proper SCSI device connections. Please note that in the following section, and in the Guide as a whole, I have used the common term controller when referring to disk adapter boards, although the more accurate description for both SCSI and IDE would be "host adapter."

Kind Regards, Michael

aka rockape

[Piru]

@leirbag28

Isnt the Blizzard SCSI module supposed to be Fast?

Fast SCSI yes. Fast SCSI is max 10MB/s.

is it faster than the normal 7200 rpm's on an IDE?

HDD RPM have nothing to do with HDD interface transfer speed.

As said already, Blizzard SCSI is faster than A1200 IDE. The best part is that it doesn't bog the CPU down, like A1200 PIO IDE does.

@HammerD

My peg2 does >50MB/s, and 90MB/s from the drive cache.