CompuServe Thread

#Ultra Slow GVP SCSI???

8 messages in this thread
#39388From: RON TROYNov 3, 1991 5:22 PM
I have a brand new GVP SCSI controller (their newest type), with extremely poor performance. Diskperf confirms this, with numbers barely faster then floppy access. Obviously, something is wrong, and anyone with any ideas on how to check this out, please speak out! Ron
#39401From: Joe WylotNov 3, 1991 6:50 PM
Ron, What Hard Disk are you using? Joe Wylot (UK) – via Whap!
#39424From: RON TROYNov 3, 1991 9:30 PM
A Seagate 157N. I did find the problem an hour ago; the mask value I put in to the prep program was wrong (I used the FFS value; I misunderstood what goes there). I still have one minor problem; I have an old, external drive that is very slow to initialize, and I haven't found any way to tell the GVP board to wait before accessing it on cold boot. Ron
#39614From: Joe WylotNov 4, 1991 7:59 PM
Ron, Yes, that particular drive is not renowned for its speed and you certainly will not be getting the most out of your controller. I have been using a GVP II card for some time now and am more than happy with it. As far as I am aware, there is no way in the hardware to set a delay at bootup although it is certainly worth phoning GVP to make sure. It may be that your only option will be to boot off a floppy first as for Kickstart 1.2. Joe Wylot (UK) – via Whap!
#39653From: RON TROYNov 4, 1991 11:04 PM
Joe, they tell me that putting some ram on the hardcard will give it some local buffering or somesuch thing to improve its performance; probably back to the levels it had on the Kronos. But it is working reasonbly well at this point. And they told me to run a certain program from their install disk towards the end of my bootup to tell the card to again check the bus for ready drives; works like a charm. In other words, I'm back in business, now under 2.04. Ron
#39821From: Joe WylotNov 6, 1991 7:38 PM
Great, I'm very pleased for you. I know how frustrating it is when a new card does not work properly. When I bought my GVP card, I found that the installation software would not work and I had to wait very patiently for almost a week for a replacement floppy to arrive. Joe Wylot (UK) – via Whap!
#39478From: Don Curtis/SYSOPNov 3, 1991 11:22 PM
Ron, You sure you formatted it under FFS? If so…sounds like time to give GVP a call. Don
#39522From: RON TROYNov 4, 1991 6:51 AM
Don, I got it fixed last night when I started playing with the 'mask' settings. The manual is a tad unclear about them and I ended up mis-setting them by accident. Once corrected performance returned to about the same as the old Kronos. My only remaining problem is figuring out how to tell the board that my external drive inits very slowly. Ron