HardFrame+Supra 14.4K
5 messages in this thread
Hello R. Simonsen
Good to see that you are now providing support here on CIS; more people
have access to CIS than Bix.
I have been using your Hardframe (version 1.9 ROM) and Quantum 105s HD
in my A2000 (no accelerator ;^( ) for years now and have been very happy
with it.
I just purchased a new SupraFAX 14.4K V32bis fax modem and was sure
surprised when I tried downloading (serial port set for 19,200) at full
speed and saving to the Hard Drive. Every thing was fine until JrComm or
NComm 2.0 wrote to the HDrive. I then got CRC errors from the ZModem
protocol.
Sure enough I looked back thru your docs and found the problem alluded
(sp) to in the "DMA Conflicts" section.
I have discovered that GVP has a patch for their Series II SCSI adapater
the help reduce the problem. The GVP patch "Transparently splits large
Data blocks into smaller ones while the Serial.device is in use" to reduce
Buss tie up's.
Do you have a similar path pgm?? If not perhaps you might consider
writing one; especially with the price of 14.4K modems becoming so low; I
expect more people will run into this problem. (I realize most of the
problem is due to Commodores poor serial hardware and not a problem with
the HardFrame.
Do you know of any 3rd party Serial Boards other than ASDG's and what
speed they might run at with the "DMA Conflicts.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
— Mike —
It is a known problem that we've attempted to fix by twiddling with the HF
driver code so far to no avail. Try reducing the Max transfer value to some
smaller value (a multiple of 512). –Redmond
Redmond,
I can get it to work with a Max Transfer of 1024, down from 130K; but
that drops my disk speed down from 500K+ to about 100k ;^( HARDLY an
acceptable solution. It's like driving your sports Car down the highway
in 1st GEAR!!!
I see GVP has a patch pgm for their Series II scsi that automatically
reduces the amount of bytes transferred at a time when ever the serial.dev
is active at the same time. Would it not be possible for you to do the
same thing? Were you able to at least partially solve the problem with
your driver code twiddling? Even if I had to reduce my transfer rate by
say 1/2 that might be acceptable.
I can dl to floppy or Ram: disk (yech!!!) but if I decide to run a BBS
I have to go to a Hard Drive, and the benefit of your speedy HardFrame is
lost.
Would adding one of your VXL*30 accelerators solve the problem? Does a
faster CPU leave more time for the HD DMA cycle and would I need the extra
RAM-32?
Thanks –Mike–
An accelerator wouldn't do much to alleviate the problem. Joanne Dow (who I
see is on CIS) maintains the HardFrame driver for us and she could give you
a better explanation of the difficulty of changing the driver to avoid
serial i/o contention. The easiest solution would be to use an ASDG serial
card for your modem. –Redmond
I'll drop Joanne Dow a note and see what she has to say. It is a SHAME
though that you seem to have GIVEN up on support for the HardFrame. When I
was looking for a HD controller I looked at Supra, GVP and the others and
decided to pay a PREMIUM and purchase yours because I felt that it was
superior to the rest.
I realize that it is hard sometimes to compensate for others
shortcomings (IE Cltd's poor serial port design) but if you want to sell
products they have to work with the existing hardware. GVP had the same
problem and were able to come up with a patch pgm to lessen the impact.
I applaud your release of a PD memory test pgm. Something that has been
lacking in the Amiga area. I would however be more than willing to pay for
an upgrade to my HardFrame that would help the serial problem and I am sure
others would also. We realize it takes time and money to keep a product
updated so don't expected unlimited upgrades. Perhaps there are just not
enough Hardframes out there to make it worth your effort (appears to be the
case)
Anyway thanks for listening. Talk to you again soon.
— Mike —