#Haynie Conference
18 messages in this thread
Don, I agree with you in general. And I'm going to buy a 2000 because it is a
the problem. The 1000 became a dead machine as soon as the 2000 was announced
despite the fact that the OS is still compatible. Everyone (developers of both
hardware and software) will be developing for the 2000. The progression of MS
DOS machines (which was _not_ and orderly process) never hurt owners of the
earlier machines because of the huge support by developers of the older
machines. That support does not exist for the Amiga. And the smaller
developer support base will move on to the newer machines for very good reason
(I am especially referring to hardware support) For example, I think that
something like a card cage for the 1000 will fail miserably. It will be just
to costly to produce in the small quantities that will be in demand. For the
cost of a card cage and a little memory one can upgrade to a 2000. The same
thing may happen with the 2000 vs a 68020 or 68030 native machine. I just wish
that I could say that my 1000 (a $2400) investment in Oct, 85) ever was more
than just a pretty face sitting on my desk. As far as useful work, an ancient
Kaypro and plain vanilla PC have been churning out word processing, DBM and
spreadsheet jobs 12 hours a day for years. The 2000 better be able to join the
group! But it sure is one sexy piece of equipment. And oh mi gosh what
potential! Hmmm Where have I heard that before? Regards, Rich
Rich,
I really don't want to put down the A1000—-it doesn't deserve it,
it's a fine machine, the first in the line, and fully software compatible with
the A500/2000 (or properly, the 500/2000 are fully compatible with the 1000).
That being said, I do have to agree, that little, if any new hardware
will be developed for it. They can be had for bargain prices now (used
machines from the trade in deals) and are well worth every penny for someone
who wants an Amiga….in fact, if I were just going to buy now, I'd get a used
1000 rather than a new 500 if I were looking in that price range…it's simply
a better machine from a hardware standpoint (power supply, detached keyboard,
etc.). Add an Insider and an HD to an A1000, and it'll be a very useful and
viable machine for a long time.
When the next Amiga comes out…I just hope that it will be slot
compatabile with the A2000, if it is, then the A2000 is a great machine today.
I believe that the next machines will be slot compatible…and thus bought an
A2000.
Don
I don't think everyone will be developing on a 2000 … right
now, my B2000 is turned off and I'm working on the A1000 because
I like the keyboard better, and it is quieter. Also I don't
have "slow-fast" ram in my A1000 so it runs a little faster.
Probably once I connect up the DMA hard disk on the B2000 and
get a 68020 card, I'll switch to it, but for now I'll happier
working on the '1K.
Cheath,
Just for reference…the 2090 controller/MiniScribe drive combination
has diskperf results of reads in the 50+K area and writes in the 13K area which
isn't bad compared to the results I've seen for A1000 HD's. (that's with a 60%
full 20Megger).
Don
You know where I can find DiskPerf? I don't see it in the DL's
( checked Dl9, 10, &11). Thanks-
Charlie
Charlie,
It's there, but isn't called Diskperf… try a BRO/KEY:perf* or a
BRO/KEY:HARD in DL 9.
Regards, Larry.
Ah, thanks, I'll check –
Charlie,
Try DSKTST.ARC in DL 9.
Don
Hey Don — We got 55k read, 39k writes under diskperf using the C LTD SCSI
interface and our driver for it; That's not even DMA… it's programmed I/o.
The DOS manages the data so badly I'd call it broken… the 2090 is supposed to
be a DMA design, isn't it? You'd think they'd be able to do better than 13k
writes. Sheesh! –Ben–
Ben,
Yup, the 2090 is a DMA setup…and I presume that the new fastdos (if
and when it appears) will take care of the write problem. I presume you
bypassed DOS to get the 39K writes because the 15K writes (I've gotten it that
high with the 2090 and 0% full drive) seem good compared to other diskperf
results I've seen (on the A1000…which shouldn't make any difference).
The one interesting thing is that there is little dropoff as the drive
fills…the results with a 50-60% full drive aren't much different that the
results with a 0% full drive. One other thing…their new hddisk driver is a
bit slower in reads than the older one, but faster in writes.
Fragmentation does slow it down a bit also…but that's to be expected
the way I see it.
Don
Ben,
I get 73K/sec reads and 30K/sec writes with the 2090 and a ST-251 40Meg
which is faster, and DMA. I heard that someone is beta testing the new FFS
with the same setup as mine and is getting about 300K/sec.
I was also told that CBM is working on a much improved hddisk driver.
I think this is the first generation driver for the 2090 where the Cltd has
gone through 10^N revisions and has reached its limits.
Back to your bike again. <grin>
Bill.
That's ok — I don't _expect_ to beat DMA speeds… I'm just continually amused
that we usually do! I think that we are utilizing the programmed I/o controller
pretty well, considering that amigados spends a LOT of effort getting in the
way of efficient data processing; And one thing you should know; This is NOT
the same driver C LTD has been using all along; it's a brand new design, and
this is it's first time in the field. We were not involved with any of their
previous efforts, and so bear no responsibility for those generations, or the
bugs contained therin. I suspect that your performance under _our_ fast file
system, will be substantially better than that achievable with CBMs… we will
see. –Ben–
I've been playing with the new FFS, and though it is great for large block
reads a lot of that speed advantage won't be borne out with the current DOS
because of the way LoadSeg() works – when doing LoadSeg() and resolving
addresses, a lot of small block reads are done rather than loading a large
block and passing back over the data after reading. The biggest advantage of
the FFS comes when reading large contiguous blocks. Not to say it's a slouch,
it will be lots faster than the current filesystem if only because the
directory seeks are better organized, and when you do perform large block IO's,
the performance is quite nice.
Yeah — IF they ever release it. <grump!> –Ben–
They will release the FFS eventually, Commodore isn't very fast
about getting out software releases but it is imminent. It
still has some bugs now, so it's better for it not to get out
to the general public yet. But the performance is much better –
large block transfers with my 20 meg HD show 218453 bytes read,
154202 bytes written per second. Also it is much more intelligent
with directories, so there isn't as much thrashing. Interestingly,
this works very well with BlitzDisk so far, because the new FFS
prefetches more directory blocks that BlitzDisk can preserve; and
the large data block reads & writes get passed through automajikly
since BlitzDisk only looks at 512 byte transfers.
.
BTW, are you in contact with CLTD? I've been waiting for several
weeks to get my HD back from service…
…cheath
I'm in contact with them, and will see if I can't nudge them 4 u. The
performance sounds good… we will see. –Ben–
Thanks – guess I should give 'em another call too.