CompuServe Thread

Hardframe 2000

5 messages in this thread
#27471From: Wolfgang KurtzDec 25, 1988 9:52 PM
The board is very clean. The only jumper are for autoboot and multi card setup. I think there are two jumpers for board id and one to turn autoboot on or off. There is another slot on the jumper block to plug your harddisk LED into. The software is made up of two programs, a hard formatter and a hard disk prep util ity. They're both written by Bob "Kodiak" Burns one of the original AMiga desig ners. The hard format for SCSI drives takes approx 10 minutes (this is off the top of my head) for a 65 Mg drive. The prep takes about five minutes and lets you set up your partitions etcetera. Then you do a soft reboot and format your partitions using standard AmigaDog Format command. The frame is very sturdy and well machined. As far as I can tell this is the fastest card on the market, IBM or Amiga. With one of the fast Quantum drives, there's no competition.
#28416From: Ronnie ColvinJan 2, 1989 4:33 AM
Wolfgang, Have you heard of anyone having problems with the RDPrep software that comes with the HardFrame? When I used the software, it told me I had 793 cylinders on my drive. A Miniscribe 8051-S (40 meg, 28 ms). When I went to do the soft format, it bombed out at 785 cylinders. I went through this loop for about 7 hours, wondering what was going wrong. I finally changed the default last cylinder to 785 and it formatted and initialized just fine. What gives? Ronnie
#28566From: Wolfgang KurtzJan 3, 1989 3:17 AM
Howdy, The problem is that the number of blocks per cylinder default is set wrong. Try giving RDPrep a figure one less than the default it gives you for useable blocks/cylinder. I think someone at Microbotics was starting at one instead of zero. Hope this helps. WVK -71410,724
#28955From: Henry ColonnaJan 5, 1989 8:33 AM
Tell me more about HardFrame and why you chose it. Is it REALLY the fastest way to go? I read the specs to larry phillips one night, and he drooled all over my monitor (:-)) but they were over my head…
#29476From: Ronnie ColvinJan 8, 1989 4:57 PM
Gosh …. Well, first I went with a name I knew. I already owned a Microbotics 8-UP board, and it performed well. The engineering and layout of the board as well as the concept impressed me. As for the HardFrame, with a transfer speed of 5 megabytes per second, it is the fastested SCSI controller out there. In some cases, oops, in some cases, the controller is faster than the drive itself!. Plus, I wanted a "hardcard" type controller, because I have plans for my 5.25 bay. Thirdly, I wanted to stay consistent with the expansion peripherals I used in my machine. Lastly, Microbotics has been around a while (since the 1000) and I figured they knew what they were doing. Ronnie