#A3000/CD-ROM/Trouble?
20 messages in this thread
I purchased a Toshiba 3301 CD Rom drive two months ago. Ever since I
bought the drive, I have been looking for a device driver to mount my
drive. A month passed by before I found a company called HyperMedia
Concepts (makers of the Fred Fish Disk on CD ROM). I talked to Chris
Henrey and I purchased the CDROM-FS Driver and as well as the Fred Fish CD
ROM.
Well the reason I'm writing is to say, "A3000 and a CD ROM is a MUST have
for all A3000 owners!". I can run all 12 of my CDTV titles without a
problem.
And all you Hardware & Software VENDORS out there…. GET ON THE BALL, we
need new products…. Updates…. And SUPPORT!!!!
Happy AMIGA owner,
Benjamin Goodyear
Hah!?
Could you tell me the list of titles those disks already running on your
3000.
– via Whap!
Great, I'm happy to hear that your CD Rom is doing a good job for you Ben!
I have the Xetec and couldn't be happier. Although I do wonder if out of
those 12 CDTV software titles one of them is "World Vista". Seems like WV's
search engine has a problem with the 68030, at least it did on my 3000. The
thing I like about the "Fish" CD's is that sometimes I'll think "Boy I
could use a program to do this.", and usually I can pop in a CD and find
it. Sure saves a lot of money, download time, and is very convienient. And
I'm glad I didn't wait for CBM's CD Rom drive, because the last rumor I
heard is sometime after the 1st of next year, which gives you a 12 month
buffer zone 8^)
John (in beautiful downtown Walla Walla) – via Whap!
John,
I'm considering the Xetec CD Rom driver. How do you like it? Have
you tried using BCache.lzh (available here) to run "World Vista"? Are the
slow access speeds a problem? The abundance of good software is really
peaking my interest but I really am not interested in getting a CDTV.
———————————————-Don- via Whap!
I like the Xetec just fine Don. I haven't run a lot of CDTV titles yet to
see how they work, but Xetec does have a compatability list that I've
uploaded in AmigaUser. I don't think BootCache will help "World Vista". I
talked to one of the programmers at Applied Optical and they admit it's
broke for use on a 68030. As he claimed, they are new at Amiga programming
and didn't take into consideration that WV might be used on a different
processor other than the 68000. He also stated that future versions of WV
would be compatable, but I haven't followed up on it to see if a new
version is available yet. The slow access speed is not really that
noticable Don. I tried an experiment to see how fast it would take to load
in the "Walker II" animation from the Fish CD as compared to the Quantum
105. The Quantum was only twice as fast, and there are a lot of files to
load for the Animation. So I'm happy with the speed, although of course I
would like it to be faster like 5ms access at 10MBytes/sec, but we can't
have everything 8^) I think you will find the CDTV compatability overall is
very good and Xetec seems to be serious about their support and improving
CDTV compatability.
John (in beautiful downtown Walla Walla) – via Whap!
Congrats! I bought the same package from the same people. (Hypermedia did
not write the CDROM-FS and cannot offer much tech support on it BTW, but
they will give you the phone number of the programmer in Canada who is very
helpful).
Unfortunately, the way I found out about CDROM-FS was in the AC Guide to
the Amiga. The reason I say unfortuanately, is that the blurb in there,
says that you can use "almost any scsi cd-rom on any amiga scsi interface".
Hypermedia wrote that blurb (or at least placed it) and it's not true.
CDROM-FS only works on scsi interfaces that support the SCSI DIRECT
protocol. The ones know by the author to work are the A590, A2091, A3000
and Microbotics Hardframe 2000 interfaces.
It will NOT work with the Trumpcard 500 nor has anyone ever gotten it to
work (to his knowledge) on any Supra or GVP interface. Which is too bad, I
have the IVS Trumpcard 500 which until now has done EVERYTHING I've asked
of it.
California Access also is listed as having a CDROM file system in the same
AC Guide, but when I called them, I was told it's a "possible product".
My solution has been to borrow an A590 interface from one of the three
local Amiga users groups to copy the *.lzh'd disks from the cdrom to our
bbs' 1.4 gig hd and then donate the CDROM-FS and CDROM disk to the user's
group.
Also, my store is now selling the current 1.2 version of the Hypermedia
Fish on CDRom disk for $50. But the $109 1 year subscription from
Hypermedia is a better deal for most people. (that's 3 disks).
Rick, do You know if the TrumpCard Pro will work with the CDROM-FS? Paul.
–pt–not seattle– 😉
Hi Paul,
Not offhand… although the folks at IVS claimed that my standard trumpcard
works with the Xetec. They did say though that I need some upgrades, both
in hardware (chips) and software to bring my TC500 up to date. They claim
to have included some of the features of the TC Pro into it.
Also, there is a file online (can't remember which forum/lib, so use the
Amiga File Finder) called SCSILI.ZOO (or maybe .ARC) which will test your
controller to see if it's SCSI DIRECT compatible (needed to use CD Roms,
Tape backups,etc). Someone is using the results to compile a listing of
compatible equipment.
I have the Toshiba Xm-3301, GVPII, Supra WORDSYNC and Hypermedia drivers. I
still cannot get it to work with either of my controllers on the A2000. I'm
pushing GVP to get on the BALL. If you have a GVPII and you want to use a
CDROM, call GVP and push them to support Hypermedia's driver or release one
of their own.
Raman
I believe that GVP has already made at least one of their line SCSI DIRECT
compatible. I think I saw the announcement here in CIS somewhere… but it
could have been in this month's Amiga Format.
I thought that the GVP II series (with the FAAASTROM) *was* SCSI Direct
compatible and could therefore be used with a standard SCSI CD ROM drive
and driver? Is the Toshiba *real* SCSI, or the pseudo SCSI used by a lot
of IBM CD ROMs?
–>Steve Bennett
Toshiba drive is real SCSI drive. I can use the CDROM/GVPII/Hypermedia
drivers under AMAXII. But, I can't run it under AMIGADOS.
Raman
Raman, when you are using the CDRom drive with Amax, do you also have to
install the Toshiba driver for the Mac? I've been thinking about getting
Amax and trying to use my Xetec drive (Chinon CDS-451), but was wondering
if I had to get the Chinon driver before it would work.
John (in beautiful downtown Walla Walla) – via Whap!
My Toshiba CDROM drive came with MAC driver software. raman
Rick,
The booklet that came with my GVP FaaastROM upgrade indicates that GVP does
support SCSI DIRECT as defined by the Commodore SCSI standard. There is a
section in the manual describing how to use the SCSI DIRECT commands.
If you communicate with the author in the future, you might mention this to
him.
David
– via Whap!
David,
same here. It even gave some example code for the SCSI direct mode.
Brian J. Bartlett
That verifies what I thought I had just heard/read. Plus a friend of mine
with a recent GVP ran the SCSILI.ZOO program I got from on here and said it
says his will.
Those companies that don't support it and don't change/offer an upgrade
path are really going to start hurting. Tony (I think that was the name of
the programmer of CDROM-FS) says that by next year there will be more SCSI
products showing up that use the SCSI Direct protocol. He mentioned tape
backups, scanners and even printers! And he DOES seem to know what he's
talking about.
I may not be talking to him for awhile, I got ragged on today for the $20
phone call to Canada. Works out to 63 cents a minute… but then again,
that's from a business phone, in the middle of a business day.
Since Xetec doesn't seem to have any problem writing a driver that works
with many different controllers, including the GVP Series II, it would seem
to me that the problem is more with Hypermedia's driver, not the
controllers.
John (in beautiful downtown Walla Walla) – via Whap!
JG>> Since Xetec doesn't seem to have any problem writing a driver that
Good point.