#Accelerators/Rodime
5 messages in this thread
Bill, I'm pretty sure that I do have the 2090 hard disk controller. The disk
drive however does not appear to be an ST-506. I believe that it is a Rodime
5035 (not sure about the number-I'd have to open the box to find out the exact
model number). It is a 40Mb disk drive. Yes, It seems to be a very old
configuration. How am I set for accelerators?
Thanks
Stuart
Stuart,
There are several accelerators which do not include a SCSI interface. You
mentioned two: Vector and CSA (MMR or Derringer). I am using the MMR with 8 meg
of memory and it is pretty fast.
There are also older versions of the GVP accelerators that do not
include a SCSI interface. Neither does the Commodore accelerator.
Finally, there should be nothing wrong with having SCSI card even with
your 2090. They can work together so far as I know and the SCSI card
will give you more flexibility for further expansion.
Two final questions: (1) do you boot from HD? If not it is most likely
a 2090. (2) how many wires is the cable connecting the HD to the
card? If 50 it is SCSI. If 32? it is not.
BTW, ST506 is a type of drive, not a brand. I have a 2090 card and
old Miniscribe drive lying around. The manual for the card lists one
Rodime drive ((RO652) but it is SCSI.
My final suggestion is to look around for a bigger SCSI HD. There are
a lot of them available now for less than $2 per meg of capacity (100
meg or more). Watch here and in the MACCLUB forum classifieds for
good deals.
I have used an A2090 scsi/st-506 controller with a GVP A3001
accelerator card as well as three different scsi controller cards.
The Amiga's autoconfiguration prevents conflicts with multiple
devices.
There are some issues that probably won't concern you… for example
with autobooting scsi controllers, the closest one to the CPU on the
bus will get a higher priority for booting and because of design
decision made by some controller manufactures multiple autobooting
controllers may interfer with each other. As far as I know all of
these have a jumper that can be used to disable autobooting.
In the case of C= controllers (A2090/A2091) I have never seen a
problem with multiple controllers installed.
Bill,
actually, there are a few drives available for less than $1 per
MB, specifically the 1.2 GB drives for less than $1199. I wish I
could afford one.
Generally speaking when somebody asks if a drive is an ST506 drive,
what they really are asking is if the drive is an ST506 STYLE drive.
The actual ST506 is a very old drive, and I believe it was only a 5
or 10 meg drive. If your drive has 2 cables going between the drive
and the 2090 than it is in fact an ST506 style drive. If it has a
single 50 pin cable going between the drive and the controller than
it's a SCSI drive. The 2090 can only handle SCSI or ST506 style
drives, and if I recall correctly the ST506 style drives can only be
DH0: or DH1: and the SCSI drives start at DH2: (a SCSI drive will be
DH2: even if there are no ST506 style drives in your machine).