GVP Drives?
26 messages in this thread
I am planning on buying the GVP 11ms 42mb hard-card. I am really
confused as to whether this is a good decision or not. I don't believe that I
will ever need a larger drive. My primary considerations are speed and cost.
Does anyone have any comment? How good are these GVPs. Is the 11ms time really
bull? ANY comments will be appreciated.
Thanks,
— Ethan
Ethan,
No idea on the GVC…just a general comment…
You never have enough storage. At work, I've got about 10 GIGabytes of
storage available…and am constantly looking for more. At home, I've got more
than 200 3.5" floppies, all in use except the 2 boxes I just bought and a 20
Meg HD that's 80% or more full all the time, plus a 10 Meg HD on the MS-DOS
side of the A2000, plus about 200 5.25" floppies for the MS-DOS side.
If I could afford it, I'd plug in a 100 Meg HD on this baby and still
not be happy with the amount of storage I've got. It's amazing the amount of
stuff I toss because I don't have room to store it all.
In other words, get as big a drive as your money will allow.
Don
Don,
Hear hear! I have about 250-300 3.5" floppies, and 2 Hard Drives that total
110 megs. Quite a few of the floppies are taken up by backups, but that's still
a lot of storage. I still think wistfully about fast, embedded SCSI drives of
300 megs, and if I had one, I can be fairly certain that I would want a 600
megger within 6 months to a year.
-larry
Larry,
We just got 9 300 Meg SCSI drives at work…and I was half tempted to
bring one home for a day just to see if I could work with it. I didn't because
I didn't want to corrupt the pd sector for UNIX and because I knew if I did
bring one home…I wouldn't want to take it back!
Don
Don,
You may recall that I borrowed a 300 meg CDC Wren from work. You are right,
you would not have wanted to take it back. 🙂
-larry
Don, sounds like you're a data junkie, just like I am….I have 100meg spinning
right now….and wish I had more.
Ethan,
I have the GVP HC-40Q hardcard, which has the 40Mb Quantum drive which is
said to have 11ms access time. I also have the autoboot roms. I have had no
problems with the hardware and the software installation is a snap -everything
runs from an interactive script file, from low level formatting to partitioning
and installation of system software and BridgeBoard software.
The system is quite fast and I am well satisfied with it. A recent issue
of Amazing Computing did a comparison of the various hard disk controllers now
available and GVP's product did quite well. I'd recommend running down that
article and reading it. As for cost, I've seen them advertized for about
$800-$850.
Darron
Ethan;
I do not have the GVP hard card so I can't offer advice on that one. I do
however have the GVP 2 MEG controller for the A2000. I have found both the GVP
controller and GVP's customer relations effort to be superb. When I got my
setup, I had a problem. I contacted GVP (who made the controller), Seagate (who
made the drive), and my retailer (who sold it all to me). Of those three, only
GVP made an honest effort to help with the problem. The problem turned out to
be the Seagate drive, which I EVENTUALLY got the retailer to replace.
For a product as expensive and complicated as a big hard drive card, it is
particularly important to evaluate post-sales service. I am certain there are
many quality vendors for the Amiga hard drive market. In my book GVP products
and service deserve an excellent rating.
I also agree with the other comment you received, that you can never have
enough HD storage space. I thought my Seagate 40+ MEG drive would be huge,
until I found out how useful it was to have a big HD. If I did not already have
my hard drive setup, I would buy the GVP 42mb hard card (unless, of course, I
could afford an 80mb version).
Ethan,
I agree with Don's comment on sizing HD's. Let your wallet determine the size.
I have a GVP 20 meg for my A500 (so you can guess as to the size of my wallet
8) and have been using KS1.3 and autoboot. The GVP seems to be very well made
and the company seems very responsive to customers. (A phone call to GVP
produced an excellent response to a [non-hardware, customer service] problem
that I had.) Autoboot is fantastic – a real pleasure after suffering through
long floppy boot sequences. I have heard from others that the GVP card and
Amiga LIVE! do not seem to like each other. I have had other problems with
GOMF3.0 which may or may not have anything to do with the GVP, KS/WB1.3,
Autoboot ROMs or some combination of the three.
David
I also have an A500, but I have the Subsystem 500, a useful Christmas
present. I can put the 2000 version hard card directly inside. Go Amigo is
selling the card for $799, and due to everyones support of GVP, I think I know
what I'm doing. And, no, my wallet won't get me a larger version.
— Ethan
Ethan,
I'm sure that you'll be pleased. Get autoboot if you can (be sure to upgrade
your A500 to KS1.3 first). The install procedure is completely automatic – just
boot the GVP disk, READ THE DOC FILE, and then click the icon.
David
Thanks for your (and everyone elses) info. The most important thing
I've heard is the customer service. I've found better tech support from mail
order companies than soft and hardware companies. I just have one, itty bitty
question left. Is there any real advantage to my getting a regular hard drive
instead of a hardcard. Is there a SCSI or ST-whatever opening at the back of
the card to add more drives?
— Ethan
Ethan,
I checked my manual and it says:
"All the GVP IMPACT SCSI Controllers provide separate SCSI connectors, namely
the 50-pin internal SCSI connector and the 25-pin external SCSI connector."
I would be _very_ careful before assuming that the hardcard version will fit
into the SubSystem 500 case. Even though the card will fit, the drive has an
overhang to it and it may be too high to fit into the case. You might consider
getting the controller card/autoboot rom/2 meg fast ram card instead. Again,
I'd check dimensions very carefully, but, you might be able to install a small
3-1/2" 20 meg drive (as opposed to a big 3-1/2" 20 meg drive 8) into the 3-1/2"
drive bay in the SubSystem 500. (I don't have one so I can't help you there –
I've got the Impact A500 that has its own case and mounts on the left side of
the computer.)
One thing I do know for certain – you will really enjoy having a hard drive on
the Amiga.
David
I have tried the GVP HC 80 with the Subsystem and it does NOT fit!
Pat.
One contrary opinion. The bigger the hard drive, the more you have to back up!
Unless you are doing large animations or are a Sysop (grin) 40 megs oughta do
it. Keep infrequently used stuff on a floppy. — Art
Love this off-site archival backup we have on CIS. 🙂
-larry
Ethan,
I'm selling all kind of hardware for the Amiga in W-Germany and I do have
experience with every controller available for the A2000. I had the chance to
compare CBM 2090, GVP Interfaces, Supra Interfaces and last but not least
MicroBotics HardFrame 2000.
Depending on what you are doing on your Amy, I'd recommend (on DMA- HardCards)
the HardFrame 2000 because it's very fast, the softwaredrivers are VERY good
and everything is just great. On NON-DMA HardCards there's only one available
(GVP) that I could recommend. But as the softwaredrivers are not good at all
the performance is not as good as it could be! Perhaps the softwaredevelopers
of GVP will think about this and rewrite their drivers. Nevertheless it's the
ONLY real non DMA hardcard available.
-Mike
Mike:
What are the advantages/disadvantages of DMA vs. non-DMA hard drives?
John
John,
Non-DMA controllers require the use of the CPU to transfer data from
the drive into memory…thus slowing down anything else going on in your Amiga
at the time. As a general rule…it's also slower than DMA.
DMA (Direct Memory Access) controllers don't need the CPU to access
memory…they can do it all by themselves so the CPU isn't slowed doing the
data transfer.
There are quirks with either method…but as a general rule, DMA is the
better way to go.
Don
I decided to get the GVP 42mb, 11ms hardcard. Price is important to me
as well as speed. the cost was $799 + $22 for autobooting eproms. I think this
was a good choice, in part because GVP has a good customer service reputation.
I just hope it will fit in the SubSystem 500!
— Etha
Ethan,
If you haven't done so already, I'd strongly suggest you check with GVP
and make sure it'll both fit and work in a SubSystem 500 before you place your
order. I don't think you'd be real happy if you got the SubSystem and the GVP
drive and found they didn't work together or it wouldn't fit.
Don
John,
this is a very complex question but I'll try to answer it:
Lets say you have an Amiga 200 and want the fastest system using 2 MB RAM, a
fast processor and a super harddrive.
Lets say you want to make a VIDEO application.
As the blitter and the rest of the chipset is using DMA it would not be too
good for the system, if the harddisk would access the systems memory via DMA as
well (perhaps you know of the problem using the CBM 2090 controller that has
DMA and having an interlaced, overscan… screen on top). Let's say you still
like the systemspeed and now think of using a fast processor- accellerator like
CSA 68020 with 2 MB SRAM or DRAM (32 bit wide). As CSA does not handle their 32
bit wide memory for DMA access the CPU likes to move the data from the 2090 to
the memory BUT the 2090 wants DMA. This could cause the whole system to slow
down and it can get slower that just using the 2090 without the fast CPU!
1. NEVER use a DMA-controller for graphics, video or whatever that is going
down to the SER:, PAR:, blitter using DMA as well.
2. NEVER use a DMA-controller together with a fast CPU (or even RAM) that does
not support DMA.
The best results would be using the 2620 with max. 4MB of DMA'd RAM and the
2090(a), HardFrame or Supra controller with DMA or, if you are working with
programs that use DMA very much, use a NON DMA-Controller (like GVP, C Ltd
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or whatever's out there) and CPU's that does not support DMA (like Ronin, CMI,
CSA and so on).
I hope I got the message right to you and that you could understand everything
I meant…. I'm not too good in english ..
-Mike
Mike,
The verdict on interlaced, overscan screens impacting the 2090 is definitely
not in yet. It would seem that it is dependent upon the program that is being
used. For example, if UShow is showing a hires, interlaced picture, you can
fire up another USahow and load a similar picture in very quick time.
Also, I might point out that I have had no problem whatsoever using SER:, or
PAR: with the 2090 in operation.
-larry
Michael,
According to the docs supplied with it and all the literature I've seen, the
GVP is a DMA interface.
David
David,
no, GVP is using a *pseudo DMA* thing? MicroBotics, Supra and CBM are the
only ones (of that I do know) that they use DMA.
-Mike