Best storage I can get? FastATA MK-VI 4000 CF/SATA

[mechy]

I saw a YouTube video that a FastATA MKVI 4000 has almost the same speed as a Cyberstorm mark III SCSI-3 Controller.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NucMgn2byVk

LOL not on the best days.He is using a cyberstorm MKII which is narrow 50 pin scsi rated 10MB/s. What they don't show you is the cpu overhead the Fastata has. SCSI is very cpu friendly in most case(proper scsi on the accelerator). zorro3 scsi will have more overhead.
the Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC ultrawide scsi will walk off and leave all these behind.
Sysinfo is not a good test for disk speed either.

[QuikSanz]

LOL not on the best days.He is using a cyberstorm MKII which is narrow 50 pin scsi rated 10MB/s. What they don't show you is the cpu overhead the Fastata has. SCSI is very cpu friendly in most case(proper scsi on the accelerator). zorro3 scsi will have more overhead.
the Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC ultrawide scsi will walk off and leave all these behind.
Sysinfo is not a good test for disk speed either.

I don't have the ppc option but sounds best to try and get a larger UWSCSI drive and stick with that.

Chris

[Damion]

You won't get 10 MB/s with a Fastlane or 4091 and a Cyberstorm MK2, but 4-5 MB/s and some 90% free CPU (according to RSCP).* Raw transfer rate aside, filesystem benchmarks (like SysSpeed for example) are just as fast with the 4091 as they are on my accelerators with onboard SCSI, so the system "feels" very nippy in general use. For kicks I've even transferred a ton of files between my 4091 and DENEB in DMA mode (a no-no) and it "seems" to work OK with no file corruption or lockups.

Bottom line: Cyberstorm MK2 and 4091 work very well together, no complaints here. I'm using a CF AztecMonster on mine, also tested real SCSI HDD's and CD drives, all work fine.

The FastATA obviously has a higher transfer rate, but it eats all your CPU in the process - no thanks.

*The Fastlane can do a bit better (maybe 7 MB/s IIRC) if you fiddle with the settings, but then it eats considerably more CPU. Both of these cards perform better DMAing to motherboard RAM than accelerator RAM (some hardware quirk), but I digress.

edit: It just hit me, you might actually have an easier time finding a SCSI module for your MK2 than a 4091 or Fastlane, or at least equal chance. You probably know that the MK2 SCSI module won't work if your accelerator is overclocked, but is obviously the best performing option of the 3.

[Heiroglyph]

the Cyberstorm MKIII/PPC ultrawide scsi will walk off and leave all these behind.

So fast they'll burn a hole in your wallet! :flame:

It sounds like nobody actually likes their FastATA? Someone has to own one to have first person experience.

Guess I'm back to the wrecking yard for parts again, huh?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

I guess it all depends what you wanna do with it.  IMHO if I was gonna invest some serious cash to build a ZIII system, I would accept nothing less than a good ZIII SCSI card.  But others are fine with just a 2091 or the like.  I've even got a couple cheap-o BSC Tandem IDE cards laying around - I don't use IDE devices very often, but was surprised when I did I was able to get 2.1MB/sec out of it with just a plain old 20GB 7200RPM WD hard drive.  That's faster than the pathetic on-board SCSI on my GeForce '040, even!  

[danbeaver]

The CS MK2 will easily give 8 MB/s in most setups and so will the FastATA 4000 with selected HDD's/CF cards. Zorro 2 bandwidth is limited as noted in the thread, but as also noted (by me) the CS MK2 SCSI resides on the accelerator bus, not the Zorro and is limited by SCSI-2.  

Although I have done a bunch of benchmarks and reported the OS4 vs OS3.9 numbers in the hyperion classic forum, I own a Buddha Phoenix (new Amigakit release), a FastATA 4000 latest version, CS MK2, CS MK3, and  CSPPC; however my real mantra is, "If is seems fast, then it is."  

The accelerator really helps makes is seem fast and anything above SCSI-1 and the Amiga built-in IDE does as well, so pick something that fits your budget (I always spend days making decision like that) and go for it; in the meantime, overclocking a CS MK2 to 66MHz is fine since you don't have the SCSI module to worry with (or higher if you can find fast RAM).

OFF TOPIC and as an aside: on both my A4000T and X1000 running OS4.1, you can use a SIL3112/4 PCI card, that's not fast, but gives you easy access to SATA drives (on the X1000 I use 3 SSD's on the MB SATA, but a 1 TB backup on the SIL3114).  I have a 1 TB backup drive on the SIL3114 in my A4000T and a SATA DVD-R/W.

Off topic: I consider the CS MK2 and SCSI module a "pair" and if I can buy only one, I wait to complete the pair with the other.  Cable routing is hell, but they are nice!

[Kawazu]

I used to have an csppc,  did not use the ppc side that often  and got fed up with old scsi disks and scsi to ide/sata converters so I bought myself a fast ata 4000 for my 3000T

I went from about 30mb/s to 6-7mb/s
Can't say I notice any difference on day to day use but when I transfer big files there ofc will be a slowdown and I miss my ppc a bit.

The fast ata is a very nice card and it's easy to setup and get working.
Sure it drains a bit of CPU but it ain't like the system can't be used while you are transferring files.

If you are like me and tired of those old and loud scsi drives and want an ide/sata configuration with Maby an ssd drive or any thing I would say go for it.

[danbeaver]

The Atlas series (originally Maxtor, and now found as Dell, Quantum, etc) of SCSI-3 drives are very quiet, fast, reliable, and almost always work on Amiga SCSI interfaces. Old, crappy drives can be loud, but not the good quiet ones.  Most of those SCSI-3 drives on eBay came from servers and were designed to be work horses it the Server Farms of just a few years back.

That being said, today's 128 GB SSD's cost next to nothing and with about $6 USD IDE<->SATA converter (given luck and a fair moon) can be used as well; I have 3 cheap SSD's in my X1000 (one dedicated to Ubuntu) and use a 240 GB on my Laptop and for the OS on my home-build office PC.  Keep in mind that the Amiga in all forms present and past has the bus completely saturated by any SSD.

[UberFreak]

I wouldnt call the CS mkII SCSI module rare.
Just put a wanted ad on Amibay & you'll get one in no time.

[Heiroglyph]

I wouldnt call the CS mkII SCSI module rare.
Just put a wanted ad on Amibay & you'll get one in no time.

I haven't seen one in a while, but maybe you're right. I've just been scanning through all the for sale sites I know of.

I usually don't like to post wanted because I feel like it drives the price up.

[mechy]

You won't get 10 MB/s with a Fastlane or 4091 and a Cyberstorm MK2, but 4-5 MB/s and some 90% free CPU (according to RSCP).* Raw transfer rate aside, filesystem benchmarks (like SysSpeed for example) are just as fast with the 4091 as they are on my accelerators with onboard SCSI, so the system "feels" very nippy in general use. For kicks I've even transferred a ton of files between my 4091 and DENEB in DMA mode (a no-no) and it "seems" to work OK with no file corruption or lockups.

Bottom line: Cyberstorm MK2 and 4091 work very well together, no complaints here. I'm using a CF AztecMonster on mine, also tested real SCSI HDD's and CD drives, all work fine.

The FastATA obviously has a higher transfer rate, but it eats all your CPU in the process - no thanks.

*The Fastlane can do a bit better (maybe 7 MB/s IIRC) if you fiddle with the settings, but then it eats considerably more CPU. Both of these cards perform better DMAing to motherboard RAM than accelerator RAM (some hardware quirk), but I digress.

edit: It just hit me, you might actually have an easier time finding a SCSI module for your MK2 than a 4091 or Fastlane, or at least equal chance. You probably know that the MK2 SCSI module won't work if your accelerator is overclocked, but is obviously the best performing option of the 3.

I have gotten 8.5MB/s off the fastlane z3. This is with the latest 8.5 roms(most the fastlanes out there have old roms).

There are 2 different scsi modules for the cyberstorm MKII, one particular scsi chip will easily work fine with overclocking to 66mhz. I seem to recall the other is his and miss. One had a Qlogic chip and the other a LSI if memory serves. Benchmarks rarely consider CPU usage and its my experience that scsi on the accelerator almost always wins over anything else for lowest cpu use. Fastlane Z3,4091,etc come in second. As you say in daily use its hard to distinguish.

[mechy]

I used to have an csppc,  did not use the ppc side that often  and got fed up with old scsi disks and scsi to ide/sata converters so I bought myself a fast ata 4000 for my 3000T

I went from about 30mb/s to 6-7mb/s
Can't say I notice any difference on day to day use but when I transfer big files there ofc will be a slowdown and I miss my ppc a bit.

The fast ata is a very nice card and it's easy to setup and get working.
Sure it drains a bit of CPU but it ain't like the system can't be used while you are transferring files.

If you are like me and tired of those old and loud scsi drives and want an ide/sata configuration with Maby an ssd drive or any thing I would say go for it.

I use a samsung pro 850 ssd on my CSPPC with the addonics scsi to sata bridge, its fast,quiet and has all the storage i could ever want. I cant believe you gave a csppc up.My combo does just around 35MB/s :crazy:

[Kawazu]

I use a samsung pro 850 ssd on my CSPPC with the addonics scsi to sata bridge, its fast,quiet and has all the storage i could ever want. I cant believe you gave a csppc up.My combo does just around 35MB/s :crazy:

The only time I needed the transfer speed was when I was showing ppl benchmark pictures and transferring very large files and I did the first more then the second so for a price of 1200Eu I let it go to a new home.

Was not a hard decision for me.

Now I use a MKII@72mhz CV64/vario/delfina/x-surf/fastata in my 3000T and I feel that I'm "done"  when it comes to expanding.

[Damion]

I have gotten 8.5MB/s off the fastlane z3. This is with the latest 8.5 roms(most the fastlanes out there have old roms).

It will do it, but when configured for "speed" there is considerably less available CPU (though still better than the FastATA obviously). Used with the Cyberstorm MK2, you'll get about the same performace as the 4091 (~5 MB/s) with 90% CPU free during the transfer (measured with RSCP).

There are 2 different scsi modules for the cyberstorm MKII, one particular scsi chip will easily work fine with overclocking to 66mhz. I seem to recall the other is his and miss. One had a Qlogic chip and the other a LSI if memory serves. Benchmarks rarely consider CPU usage and its my experience that scsi on the accelerator almost always wins over anything else for lowest cpu use. Fastlane Z3,4091,etc come in second. As you say in daily use its hard to distinguish.

I've heard this too. From what I've tested here (with the one that's supposed to work overclocked) it still works at 57MHz, but not at 60 or above. The only difference I've seen between the two modules is the manufacturing date of the SCSI chip, which despite different "branding" should perform identical. If you look at the chip's datasheet, it seems some things would be seriously broken with the MK2 overclocked, so I'm doubtful this was anything but a rumor. Even if it "worked" I wouldn't trust it.

[danbeaver]

I don't know what drive you were using, but with the CS MK2 SCSI I've gotten 8.2 and 8.3 MB/s with a Maxtor Atlas (SCSI-3 and adapter).  Rotational speed matters little here.

All my SCSI drives are Atlas's as the other, crappier makes have died over the past 20+ years.

[Damion]

I don't know what drive you were using, but with the CS MK2 SCSI I've gotten 8.2 and 8.3 MB/s with a Maxtor Atlas (SCSI-3 and adapter).  Rotational speed matters little here.

All my SCSI drives are Atlas's as the other, crappier makes have died over the past 20+ years.

5 MB/s with the 4091 or Fastlane (configured for lowest CPU use) in conjunction with the overclocked MK2. :-) You're probably aware, the SCSI module doesn't work with the MK2 overclocked, hence talk of the 4091/Fastlane.

There is an adapter kit you can buy, which makes it possible to run the '060 at 2x the busclock. So, for example, you could run a Rev 6 '060 at 80 or 100MHz, while the SCSI and RAM on the MK2 run at 40 or 50MHz. This should allow the SCSI to work with an overclocked processor. (AFAIK it's been done already by some members on the German a1k.org forum.)