#Wanted: GVP Ser. II Info
8 messages in this thread
Does anyone have an experience with the new GVP series II Hard-Disk+RAM
card? I am thinking of trading in my Hardframe and selling my 8-UP DIP
board for a couple of reasons. For one thing, the GVP boards work much
better with removeable media like SyQuest drives, CD-ROMS, and
Magneto-Opticals (R/W opticals). Also (from what I've heard) the AMAX II
Plus card is not gonna work with the HardFrame. Of course, using only 1
slot for drive and 8MB RAM doesn't hurt either!
Anyone using this controller? Thanks in advance…
– Steve Hall –
P.S. What kind of speed difference is there between the HardFrame and the
GVP boards?
I have the GVP Series I card (8 Megs of sockets & SCSI controller) and just
installed the Series II FaaastROM chips into it- effectively making the
board a Series II (except I can't mount a drive on it- but then I have a 5
1/4'' hard drive anyway…)
It is nice having an extra slot free, and the board works without a hitch.
(The new ROMs can conflict with SetCPU if you have an 020 or 030- gotta
watch the settings.) It IS faster than before…and the new software
itself was worth the upgrade ($51 after shipping, tax, etc.) With an FFS
partition, BAD and the new ROMs, the drive moves real quick (Seagate 296N-
28 ms access 80 meg drive, with 2×40 meg partitions). I am going to play
with the interleave this weekend to find the optimal performance setting.
-Chas
What kind of interference happens with '020 & '030 boards and are they
fixable with the settings?
– Steve –
The new GVP Series II (or the new ROMs) automatically load themselves into
32-bit RAM if it is available- making the CARDROM option obsolete. Problem
is, if you include the CARDROM option anyway, the system goes all funny.
Mine refused to recognize the drives as bootable (asking for a floppy),
then had MAJOR problems with JRComm (would totally trash anything and
everything else– including WorkBench & everything on it!)
After I deleted the CARDROM option from my s-s (used only because the
KEYPATCH option requires it), all was well. Was frustrated for a time, but
it is running smoothe and fast now!
-Chas
Steve:
We use HardFrames on all the machines at work, typically hooked to either a
Conner 340 (40 meg half height), Conner 3040 (40 meg quarter height), or
Seagate-Imprimus Wren V (170 meg half height). The Wren has an average
access of 14 ms, the Conners somewhere in the over 20 ms range. The
HardFrame seems to still be a bit faster than the GVP series II
controllers, although the difference is not as staggering as it was before.
On the Wren, using Dperf2, the 256K buffer read was in the 800 kb/sec range
with the Series II. With the HardFrame, the same read produced a 1.2
mb/sec read. The speed differences decreased proportionally with buffer
size, but as I recall there was still a substantial difference even at 512
bytes. I wish I had the stats to display in this message, but they're at
work. If I get a chance (and remember to do it) I can upload them from
there if you're still interested.
Ariel
Well, I am not surprised that the HardFrame is faster than the GVP, but so
far Microbotics doesn't seem to handle removeable media very well (doesn't
do an automatic diskchange). Also (and this is a pretty big factor), I
heard that the AMAX II Plus' hard drive & SCSI abilities isn't going to
work with the HardFrame.
Anyone else heard this?
– Steve –
If you will call Microbotics they now have available a new set of ROMs for
the HardFrame that now does the auto diskchange for removeable media just
fine.
Greg
Greg White / MicroSearch 72230,1617
We listen to our customers..carefully
Thanks for the info. Now all need is the H.F. to work with the AMAX II.
– Steve –