4000's and SCSI II contr
31 messages in this thread
All,
Can anyone give me the straight scoop on a SCSI controller for a 4000. I have
heard about the 4091, but it seem to be vapor. Also I have heard about
something called a FastLane, but I can't seem to grow any information about it
as well. I also ran into someone that said that a 3rd party was taking over
the manuf. of the 4091. None of this sounds right.
HELP! HELP! HELP
A little ole 2091 just doesn't cut it. Even if someone elses 2000 SCSI
controller works better than the 2091 that would be valuable feedback.
Any takers,
Alan Adamson
[72370,613]
The latest information I have been able to get in my nearly year
long quest for a fast scsi controller for my 4000 is that my dealer
tells me that the 4091 has been "out sourced" by C=. Translation:
"4091, doesn't work right? Not our problem, we don't make a 4091.
What, your Buster is busted? Sorry no mother board upgrades without a
4091 sale. . . Oh yeah, we don't sell a 4091 anymore!" Grrrr :(!
Paul,
Have you heard anything about the 4008 from GVP. I understand it is not
SCSI-2, but is a good SCSI controller and one that will work correctly in the
4000. I know from a fact that the 2091 does not work in the 4000. Well not
very well.
Thanks,
Alan Adamson
Alan,
I am using a 2091 now for my scsi needs (80meg Quantum, Syquest, and
CDrom). It works fine but SLOOOW. My first priority is to get my
motherboard replaced. I don't want to be stuck with a busted Buster. Who
knows what zorro III cards may need to DMA in the future.
With my luck the day after I bought another scsi-1 controller someone
would come out with a great scsi-2/32bit memory/060 accelerator board! I
think I'll wait a while longer to see what develops.
…AutoPilot Engaged…
-Paul-
I hate to disagree, but I have been using an A2091 SCSI controller on
my A4000 for several months now. It works fine for a SCSI controller
(not as fast as SCSI II). I did notice that the A2091 was painfully
slow until I installed a patch called "Mapboard" available here on
Compuserve. You really should give it a try. I think you'd find the
speed to be much inproved.
Matt,
I did try the Mapboard fix. It was a noticable improvement. Let me just shed
a bit more light on this subject. I just got a 4008 from GVP, it is really
just a HC8+ without drive, but with new ROMS and drivers. With the 2091
Patched, I was able to backup to a 4mm DAT drive about 3.5MB/min on the 2091
(tape drive hooked up to the 2091). With the 4008 that number went up to
10MB/min (tape drive hooked up ot the 4008. Next I'm going to try the MapBoard
fix on the 2091 and see what mapping the rom's into ram will do for
performance. What do you think??
Alan
Alan,
FYI- MapROM will work in conjunction with patches like A4091 and
2091turbo, since they are different kinds of patches.
-Chris
Chris,
I have tried both of the patches and with MapBoard, and 2091Turbo, or 4091Patch
and MapBoard, or either by themselves. What i found was that if I did a backup
and then a compare, it would mis-compare. I also started to notice streaks
(for use of a better term) when showing pics from a drive that was attached to
the 2091. I had neither problem when just using MapBoard, but adding either of
the other and I had corruption. It wasn't worth the risk and so I stopped
using 4091Patch. Also the 4008 from GVP is much faster than the 2091. Not
SCSI-2 speeds, but acceptible.
Thanks,
alan
Alan, or anybody,
I just d/l'd Mapboard to use on my A2091. I noticed you have been using it.
What is the correct option to use for the A2091 board? The docs say to enter
"A2091/S". What is that trailing "/S"? I have tried several different choices
for "S" and I don't get any performance improvements. Thanks for any help.
John
John,
I use Mapboard and just put it in WBStartup with the tooltypes A2091 and
DONOTWAIT. It significantly speeded up my scsi access on a 4000 with
2091.
-sja
John,
You can drop the /s just put in "A2091" and that should be fine.
Alan
Although the 2091 "worked" with the 4000, I found it's speed unacceptable
even with mapboard. It's speed with SysInfo was about 375K/sec. The GVP
HC8 Series-II controller is about twice as fast at about 770K/sec. I think
it would top out at over 1MB/sec if I had some 16-bit memory in the 4000,
but I don't. But so far, the HC8 seems to be working fine and that's what
I'm sticking with until I can get this stupid 4091 to work. With the 4091
controller card, it pumps out 2.7MB/sec, at least until it crashes the
4000 8^(
// John – (Flying via AutoPilot)
\X/
John,
I wish I had a 4091 to try. Although I would need a motherboard update as
well. I have a rev 9 buster. I would also try a FastLane, but can't seem to
find one of them either. I agree with you about the HC8 or 4008. Do you have
the new drivers from GVP and rom that comes with the 4008? They work great.
As you stated, much better that the 2091. Now to get MapBoard to work with the
GVP to map the ROM into RAM, I wonder if that would help any. I have seen
10MB/min backup rates through the 4008 card.
Hey one other question while I have you. Have you added any IDE drives to your
4000. I added a Segate 3390 (345MB and very fast), but I can't seem to get the
mother to cold boot from the drive, It will warm boot, but no luck on cold
boot. I may have the cables in the wrong order( you know the end one on the
second drive or vic-versa), but I didn't think that mattered.
Let me know,
Alan Adamson
[72370,613]
Well Alan, I have the HC8 with the 4.13 ROM's, but I'm not sure yet if
that makes it a 4008 controller. I left a message for Gary Nush of GVP to
get a little clarification on this matter, so maybe he will jump in here
to clarify things a little. Although the HC8 works much better than the
2091, it still seems like it should be faster than it is. I get about
750K/sec transfer rates on a 1.3GB SCSI-II drive. When the 4091 is
installed, I get about 2.7MB/sec transfer rates. I'm beginning to believe
that if I want any faster transfer rates out of the HC8 that I would have
to add some 16-bit memory to the 4000, but I don't think I will do that
unless I see no hope of getting this 4091 to work <g>.
As far as Mapboard goes, I'm not sure if it would speed up anything or
not. I haven't tried it yet for the HC8 so maybe when I have a chance I'll
see if it works.
Haven't added any more IDE drives to the 4000 because that 1.3GB SCSI-II
Toshiba should hold me over for awhile <g>. Actually I wan't to stay away
from IDE as much as possible. Once I get that 4091 to work, I plan on
retiring the SeaGate IDE drive to my Vortex Bridgeboard. As to your
SeaGate cold boot problems, maybe you have one of those SeaCrates that
doesn't initialize fast enough before the controller goes out and polls
it. SeaGate's have been notorious for this, and it wouldn't surprise me if
your's is having that problem. There is a specific list of IDE drives
compatable with the 4000 so you have to be careful.
// John – (Flying via AutoPilot)
\X/
Putting 16 bit RAM on the HC8 makes sense to speed it up because otherwise
you're DMA'ing into CHIP RAM (no other memory in lower 24 bit address space).
If you're using any half decent AGA mode for display then your HC8 is competing
with the custom chips. Even a 1MB SIMM (about $40) will help a lot I believe.
I have a 4091 as well, and I could not get it to run reliably until I turned
off synchronous mode with dip switch 6. With that off, I get around 2.5 megs a
second.
Rusty Williams
Alan,
I've added a Maxtor 7345A to the 4000, and it also refuses to cold-boot
(or cold-mount). The problem is not with the drive, but in the 4000… I
bought my 4000 in January '93 and the drive works fine in newer 4000's so
this is obviously a motherboard problem and it may be so with you also.
In addition to the mounting problem, the drive will only write at
100Kbyes/sec (it is capable of 3.7Mbytes/sec). Try copying a large file
from RAM: and see if your drive writes slowly.
-Chris
I also talked with my dealer (Creative computers in LA). They
confirmed the IDE boot problems on the older 4000's. Mine is also
about the same time as yours. I think it was DEC 92 or Jan 93. I
haven't tried the copy from RAM: but will. How do you really test
this??
Have you upgraded your mother board? I understand that if you can
find one at your dealer, they might update it just for the IDE bootup
problems. I have been trying to get a 4091, but can't seem to find
one, with that you get a motherboard upgrade. Too bad C= almost got
it right. I am a big fan of Amiga's, but with that C= would have got
it right. Maybe not all the right ideas, but IDE wasn't a bad one.
Besides I just bought a 340 MB Seagate for $245 with great
performance specs. Try that with SCSI. I just wish it all worked
together.
What is this older 4000 IDE boot problem you are referring to? I
purchased mine in DEC-92 and its always been kind of adventure when
turning on cold. Most times the machine will fire up correctly and
other times I get the screen asking for the WB disk, a reboot brings
up the WB screen.
My local dealer could care less…
Eddie,
Apparently there is a timing issue with fast IDE drives. On the old
motherboard if you have a drive that didn't spin up to speed (mainly
an issues with fast drives as they turn at a higher spindle speed),
that they machine would not cold boot, but warm boot (drive already
spinning) would work fine. I added a 340MB Seagate (one that is very
fast and does turn at a high speed) and my 4000 will not boot from it
cold, but warm is fine. Supposedly this is fixed in the currently
shipping 4000 and the motherboard upgrade (when and if avail) will
fix in the old ones.
Alan
I missed the start of this thread. I've been wondering about my A4000, too –
sometimes it doesn't boot on power-up and requires a second three-fingered
reboot. Is this a known bug?
John,
Hopefully, you will see the message that I just sent to this, but the answer
that I got from my dealer, was "this is a known problem" and is fixed in the
new machines. It only happens with a fast drive that doesn't come up to speed
rigth away. Warm boot always works…
Alan
John,
I bought a new Amiga 4000 with the 120 MB IDE hard disk from a local Amiga
dealer in July. The manufacturing date stamped inside the top of the lid
to the computer states that it was made in May 1993. About half the time
the computer will not boot up from a cold start, but ultimately puts up
the animation asking for the WB disk. I have even loaded a program called
Battmem which will delay polling the drive for two seconds after power up,
and that does not help. When this happens, I ultimately have to put the
Workbench disk in the computer, allow it to read the Workbench disk, then
either hot or cold reboot the machine. Sometimes I have to do all this
more than once. It's a real pain, and I wish I could identify the problem
as being the IDE hard disk drive or some fundamental motherboard problem.
It's disgusting to have a new A4000 that behaves this way, and once more
points to the fact that when you purchase an Amiga you are on your own.
As near as I can tell there is no Amiga service, either from Commodore or
elsewhere!
Tom
"How do you really test this??"
It can be as simple as copying a large file from RAM: to the main dir of
the HD. I used the DPaint program (which is 400K) and that takes about 11
sec. to copy (about 10 sec. too long).
"Have you upgraded your mother board?"
No, I haven't had the chance.
-Chris
John & Alan,
It sounds like you both have done alot more testing than I have. I wanted to
have "reasonable" transfer speed and the A2091 with Mapboard seemed to fit the
bill for me UNTIL I can afford something like the Fastlane. I'm very
interested in the Fastlane because it works with old Busters (so they claim),
provides very high data transfer rates and ALSO has RAM expansion.
My frame of reference was that when I first installed my Bernoulli and A2091,
it took about 2 hours to format the 150 meg partition. When Mapboard was
installed and running right, I formatted another 150 meg partition in about
10-15 minutes!
Thanks for the details.
Matt
Yep, the 2091 should hold you over until you get the Fastlane, and
they are relatively cheap mailorder (~$60). But with some of the work
I'm doing, I needed something a little faster, so decided to go with
the HC8 until the 4091 problems get resolved. One thing I noticed
after installing the HC8 is that I get 0 error's on my streaming tape
drive, whereas before on the 2091 I use to get 10-15 corrupted files
when it did a compare. So it works a little better, is a lot faster,
so for now I'm happy 8^)
Are you using 2091Turbo or 4091Patch? If so that is why you were
getting errors. I tried both with a 2091 and MapBoard and in both
cases I would get compare errors as well when it did a verify. If I
didn't load either of those utils all was ok. I also got the HC8+ or
as they call it now 4008. SCSI-1 performance, but much better that
the 2091. Even with 7.0 ROMS. Now I have to decide whether to go
4091 or FastLane. If it wasn't for the fact that I just put a 340MB
IDE in with the 120 that was already there and the fact that the 4000
(at least my version) won't boot from that drive, I might just waite
for the fastlane. But I do want to boot from the IDE and so I may
get the motherboard swapped out with the 4091. (I have ver 9 of
Buster and the machine is Jan 93 old).
My dealer tells me that the 4091 has been "out sourced", meaning
that C= doesn't sell the 4091 anymore!
C=, "So you want a mother board swap for the 4091? What 4091?"
My dealer is trying to get me a motherboard swap anyway. But I have
not seen it yet. 🙁
No Alan, I tried 2091Turbo and 4091Patch, but soon dropped them
both when Mapboard became available, so I never used them in
combination and still had tape verify errors.
Well if you have the $$$, I would say go with the Fastlane instead
of the 4091. It works with the old buster and you won't have to worry
about getting a new processor board either. There was a review of
different SCSI controllers available for the 4000 in the latest
AmigaWorld with speed comparisons. The Fastlane was just as fast as a
4091, and you get the added benefit of 32-bit RAM expansion.
I may need the motherboard upgrade as I have a new IDE drive the won't
cold boot because of the old motherboard. What is this about the
processor board???? that you mentioned?
Alan, if you purchase a 4091, not only does your Buster need to be
the latest revision (-11), but your 68040 processor board MUST be a
revision 3.1 or later. Not only that, but even if you get a 3.1
processor board, U209 must be a revision -2 PAL. Some of the 3.1
processor boards got out without the PAL revision, and so my
4091/4000 operation is still flaky. So you will need to make sure
that the repair center checks which processor board you currently
have, and if it needs the 3.1 version, make sure when he gets it that
he checks for the proper PAL revision. So that's why I suggested
going with the Fastlane instead, and put up with the cold boot
problem. If you get a 4091, it might not be worth the heartache.