How many drives in A4000D?

[doctorq]

what I was trying to say (badly) was that using a Buddha is better than using the internal IDE on the A4000.

And why is that? The only advantage with using a Buddha on an A4000 is that the ports are easier to access, and you get two channels instead of one (not a big deal if you only have a harddrive and a CD drive). Speedwise they are more or less equal.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:

And why is that? The only advantage with using a Buddha on an A4000 is that the ports are easier to access, and you get two channels instead of one (not a big deal if you only have a harddrive and a CD drive). Speedwise they are more or less equal.

Speedwise, I'm sure that the Buddha in PIO4 mode is going to outstrip that internal header in PIO0 mode by a factor of 2.  Plus it can take 6 IDE devices, has an A1200 clockport expansion port and comes with some nice CD ROM setup software which avoids having to use IDEFix.

[Darrin]

hardlink wrote:

Just beware of the heat generated and the power used. CBM used a crappy PS that doesn't move much air or have much reserve power.

Hmmm... I've been kind of worried about that.  Now that I've filled my Zorro slots up and packed in the extra drives, there's bugger all space left inside the case.

I haven't put the lid back on yet, but considering what you say, I'm tempted to drill a lot of holes into the 2nd floppy drive blanking plate and perhaps mount an extractor fan on the inside and blow that hot air out of the front.

[doctorq]

Speedwise, I'm sure that the Buddha in PIO4 mode is going to outstrip that internal header in PIO0 mode by a factor of 2.  Plus it can take 6 IDE devices, has an A1200 clockport expansion port and comes with some nice CD ROM setup software which avoids having to use IDEFix.

AFAIK the Buddha can't do PIO4, PIO0 only, and you can only have 4 devices attached, not 6. The clockport is a bonus, I'll give you that.

As for the software, well, it's more or less the same as any other CD software around.

[davideo]

I've been reading this thread with interest and awe  :crazy:

I've got a Buddha that I'll be sticking into my 4000D shortly so that I can add an internal backup hardrive. I've currently got a hardrive and CD connected to the original internal IDE connector.

I thought I'd read that the Buddha wouldn't auto boot  :rtfm:  or is this only the original version? (which is the one I've got).

Dave G  8-)

[PaSha]

If you have a SCSI-controller on your Warp Engine, it should have DMA (direct memory access) which means disk access uses little or no CPU power (and with a decent not-too-old drive you'll get close to 10 MB/s speeds).

FastATA, and any IDE controller, use quite a bit of CPU during disc access.
So with SCSI (with DMA, there are non-DMA scsi controllers around too), you not only get faster disk access but also a generally faster system because of the extra CPU power freed by not using IDE.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
AFAIK the Buddha can't do PIO4, PIO0 only, and you can only have 4 devices attached, not 6. The clockport is a bonus, I'll give you that.

I bet it can.  The Buddha pref let you set what PIO mode you want to use for each channel.  I remember setting it to high for an old IDEZ drive and couldn't get it to boot until I used the prefs to crank it down (The PIO settings are stored on the Buddha so that it knows in what ode to operate).  You could also see the speed difference if you used SysInfo - and I'm talking A3000 and A2000 here.

You're right, it's not 6 - it's 8 devices (you can use IDE splitters on 2 headers to attach 4 drives to each header giving a total of 8 devices (try finding space for them!)  ;-)

As for the software, well, it's more or less the same as any other CD software around.

Well it's nice to have it all rolled into 1 handy install CD instead of rummaging around on Aminet for unlicensed untilities, some of which need registering to get rid of annoying screens.  There's also a couple of handy untilities on the Buddha disk.

[Darrin]

davideo wrote:
I've been reading this thread with interest and awe  :crazy:

I've got a Buddha that I'll be sticking into my 4000D shortly so that I can add an internal backup hardrive. I've currently got a hardrive and CD connected to the original internal IDE connector.

I thought I'd read that the Buddha wouldn't auto boot  :rtfm:  or is this only the original version? (which is the one I've got).

Dave G  8-)

The one I had was the Buddha Gold (which used gold plated connectors) and it certainly did autoboot on the A2000 and A3000.  IIRC the old one didn't have the A1200 clock port.

[RMK305]

Thanks for the replies. Afetr a quick check on amiga resource http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/warpengine it appears that the SCSI has DMA.

Now, where to get a 50 pin 20Gb SCSI hard drive? I checked ebay but they  all seem too be 68 pin or higher. Anyone got a spare the would sell?

Thanks,

Robert

[PaSha]

There are 68-50 pin SCSI adapters that you can use with a 68-pin drive.
Should work straight out of the box (did for me), but you may need to move some jumpers on the drive ('force SE' or 'LVD/SE').

[darksun9210]

ok, from my understanding, the PIO mode settings you set on the buddah card is how fast the card talks to the drive, and has nothing to do with how fast the card talks to the amiga. you are limited to the zorro2 limits of 2-3MB/s

for those interested, here are the numbers.
PIO mode 0 - cycle time 600ns - Max Xfer 3.3MB/s
PIO mode 1 - cycle time 383ns - Max Xfer 5.2MB/s
PIO mode 2 - cycle time 240ns - Max Xfer 8.3MB/s
PIO mode 3 - cycle time 180ns - Max Xfer 11.1MB/s
PIO mode 4 - cycle time 120ns - MAX Xfer 16.7Mb/s

so PIO mode 0 with a decent drive, will max out zorro2, and the amiga's onboard IDE. the best i've personally seen on the built in IDE port is 2.9MB/s.

sure, a Zorro3 fastATA card will push bigger numbers, but you need a big (060?) CPU to get anywhere near PIO mode 4's maximum speed. this is why DMA is good, and PIO is pants in comparison. PIO, will serve you well if its all you got.

for those who like a bit of data sadomasacisum (however you spell it), you can put a 4 way IDE adadapter on the internal port and run two hard disks, a DVD rom, and a Zip drive off of it at the same time, if you like. such a setup served me well untill i could afford to get an accelerator with scsi.

so for the best of both worlds, cheap IDE drives, and SCSI performance/lack of CPU usage, i'd get an IDE2SCSI adapter or two. vesalia.de have them in stock. they work on both IDE hard drives, and IDE CD/DVD drives.

as for the most amount of drives in an A4000D case, thats 2 internal 3.5" half height drives, 2 external 3.5" half height drives, and one external 5.25" drive.

hope this helps.  :-)

[A4000_Mad]

darksun9210 wrote:

you can put a 4 way IDE adadapter on the internal port and run two hard disks, a DVD rom, and a Zip drive off of it at the same time, if you like.

Yeah that's what I've done. Also got an Oktagon SCSI card with a SCSI hard drive and an external Iomega 2GB Jaz drive on it. Recently added an old Tandem device to a Zorro slot and put an IDE > Compact Flash card reader in too :-)

[Darrin]

darksun9210 wrote:

for those interested, here are the numbers.
PIO mode 0 - cycle time 600ns - Max Xfer 3.3MB/s
PIO mode 1 - cycle time 383ns - Max Xfer 5.2MB/s
PIO mode 2 - cycle time 240ns - Max Xfer 8.3MB/s
PIO mode 3 - cycle time 180ns - Max Xfer 11.1MB/s
PIO mode 4 - cycle time 120ns - MAX Xfer 16.7Mb/s

hope this helps.  :-)

Thanks for those numbers.

What confuses me is why the same drive in PIO mode 0 manages a lousey 1.1MB/s, but does over 6MB/s in mode 4.  If mode 0 allows 3.3MB/s and I've achieved over 6MB/s over the Zorro 3 bus in mode 4 then surely I should be getting better than 1.1M/s in PIO mode 0?

Task for today:  Connect the same drive to te internal header and check speed, then reconnect to the FastATA in mode 0 and check speed.  I'll be back...    :-D

[doctorq]

Task for today:  Connect the same drive to te internal header and check speed, then reconnect to the FastATA in mode 0 and check speed.  I'll be back...    :-D

Then you are still putting a FastATA equal to a Buddha card, and it's still wrong. The FastATA will be much faster than the Buddha and it will be much faster than the onboard IDE controller.

As told earlier, the FastATA is Z3, Buddha is Z2, and the Buddha and onboard IDE controller are equal speedwise.

[Darrin]

doctorq wrote:
Then you are still putting a FastATA equal to a Buddha card, and it's still wrong. The FastATA will be much faster than the Buddha and it will be much faster than the onboard IDE controller.

As told earlier, the FastATA is Z3, Buddha is Z2, and the Buddha and onboard IDE controller are equal speedwise.

Nah, the point of this test is to check the speed difference of the A4000 mobo IDE in mode 0 against the FastATA in mode 0.

I agree the Zorro3 FastATA is faster than the Zorro2 Buddha.  This is just to see exactly how crappy (or not) the internal IDE header is on the A4000.

[doctorq]

@Darrin

Please specify if you are talking about the Buddha or the FastATA (as I think it is) in the following

I bet it can. The Buddha pref let you set what PIO mode you want to use for each channel. I remember setting it to high for an old IDEZ drive and couldn't get it to boot until I used the prefs to crank it down (The PIO settings are stored on the Buddha so that it knows in what ode to operate).