#Konica 10MB floppy
23 messages in this thread
I've come across what I believe is the bare Konica 10MB floppy drive that
Supra and C-Ltd use/used in their 10MB removable SCSI drives.
Does anyone out there know if there is anything particularly troublesome in
implementing this drive with the A2090 interface? Is it simply a matter of
making a mountlist with the proper SCSI device #, sectors, tracks, etc.?
The A2090 requires a small Old File System partition when used for FFS- can
I do this with this drive? My Quarterback version 2.0 claims it supports
the Konica drive, but gives no particular instructions for using it. Do I
have to issue a DiskChange command when changing disks?
Just wondering if I get this thing, am I getting myself into a can of
worms, or am I going to be able to just treat it like another SCSI device.
I was lucky enough to have your sage advice about the 3M SCSI streaming
tape device that wouldn't work without a custom driver. Is this a similiar
situation?
+ Phil +
Phil,
I have the Konica on my system, but use a CLtd Kronos controller. I
don't know if the A2090 is a SCSI controller nor how many drives it will
support. The Konica is a SCSI drive and as such only needs to be daisy
chained on the 50 pin ribbon buss. You must be sure that only the LAST
drive in the chain has a terminator. The Konica's terminating resistor
pack is on the side of the drive. If it is the last drive, then you can
leave the terminator pack installed, but be sure you remove any terminator
pack in the earlier drive(s). The Konica will require a DiskChange command
because it is removable media. You will also need the special floppy disks
from Konica, you can order them through Abel Supply at $19.47 each. The
diskettes will need to be formatted first low-level then with AmigaDos
Format to put FFS on it. You will also need a mountlist entry for it. It
does work with Quarterback. If you need any help let me know. First and
foremost, however, you need to determine if the A2090 is a SCSI controller
and if it supports more than one drive. Oh, you will also have to set the
device id for the Konica to something other than 0, because your hard drive
probably is set to 0. If you need direct help my number is 813-985-5611.
Steve
Wow! What a great fountain of useful information you are! I bow down to
the wonderful help you've given me…sounds like it might work!
Thanks again
+ Phil +
Phil,
Please let me know if you have any problems. I've gone through it
myself, so I may be able to help you. I have never tried using the Konica
as my primary boot device, and I don't recall if that was your intent. The
Konica is relatively slow compared to most hard drives. I have gotten
read/write speeds which are slightly slower than for an old ST-225 Seagate,
about 80kbyte per second. It's definitely not the ideal device for speed!
But it makes a great backup device, which is what I use it for. The only
drawback is that diskettes are a tad expensive at nearly $200 for a box of
ten, and they are not easy to find. I know of no one other than Abel
Supply which sells the disks, and even Abel has to special order them. But
their price is good, nearly half of retail. Call me if you need any help.
Steve
Well I just may be calling you. I got the drive tonite, and although it
seems to work (after some noodling) with the previous owner's Atari ST
system, I'm having some troubles getting it to work on mine.
The A2090 supports up to 7 SCSI devices, as well as up to 2 ST-506 drives.
In the setup of a hard disk, nowhere is it mentioned that one has to "low
level format" the hard disk. Indeed this was not necessary when I
installed my original SCSI Hard Disk. Perhaps this is what is missing in
my use of the Konica. By the way, the drive is a Konica KT-510. I'm not
really considering the prime use of it for a hard disk, I have one of
those. Primarily I want it to back up the H.D., and it appears on the
Atari that it's 3-4 times faster than floppies, which is plenty good for
me. On his system it even reads IBM format 5 1/4" disks…an interesting
bonus.
I've had loads of problems getting it up and running (as usual- sometimes I
think 80% of the difficulties are with the A2090, it's strange
requirements, and pathetic documentation). I discovered that using the old
Hddisk driver (which is OVERWRITTEN on the new version, if that's what
you're using- when the C= HD install program is run!), or using the 1.3
Binddrivers command, will result in the drive locking up itself and/or the
CPU any time an attempt is made to access it. These revelations cost me
several hours in and of themselves.
Once I managed to get the combination that didn't shut everything down,
when I attempted to format the drive, it seemed to time out after the first
cylinder of RES2:, and the main (FFS) partition. Here is my mountlist:
(Cont. in next message)
How much cost the Konica drive itself? Speed?
Pat,
The list is, I think, now $795. I bought mine about 8 months ago
from Abel Supply for $495.00 plus shipping. Abel no longer lists the
Konica in their catalog, but I don't think that means they won't order it
for you. The diskettes are $19.47 each, also from Abel, list on them is
about $39.00 each. You can buy diskettes singly or in boxes of 10. The
drive's speed is roughly equivalent to a Seagate ST-225, about 80k byte
reads/writes using FFS.
Steve
(Cont. from previous msg.)
* SCSI drives are units 3 and up */ * KONICA KT-510 MOUNTLIST */ * First
Physical Partition, for Amiga "Prep" use */ RES2: Device =
hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 30
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 0 ; HighCyl = 1
Buffers = 5
BufMemType = 4 # * First Data Partition, Automounted,
OldFileSystem, to start FFS */ DH3: Device = hddisk.device
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 30
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 2 ; HighCyl =3
Buffers = 5
BufMemType = 4 # * Main Konica Data Partition, approx. 10 –
10.75 MB */ KF: Device = hddisk.device
FileSystem = L:FastFileSystem
Unit = 3
Flags = 0
Surfaces = 2
BlocksPerTrack = 30
Reserved = 2
Interleave = 0
LowCyl = 3 ; HighCyl =349
Buffers = 30
BufMemType = 4
GlobVec = 1
Mount = 1
DosType = 0x444F5301
StackSize = 4000
MaxTransfer = 0x77abcdef # ++ What do you think, is this
workable? ++
++ Hopefully the specs I have on the drive
are accurate. Ideas? ++ I know the A2090
mountlist is different- maybe too different to tell.
Phil,
I presume you have an expansion RAM board in your A2000…because
you're asking for FAST RAM only for your buffers. A BufMemType of 0 is
"best"….it will grab FAST RAM if it's available, otherwise it'll grab
CHIP RAM.
Don
Yes..I have a 3MB. Here's my system:
Amiga 500
.5M internal expansion
Subsystem expansion chassis
A2090 HD driver
Microbotics 8UP! memory board with 2MB loaded
Conner CP-340 (752 cylinder version), no terminator pack)
Konica KT-510 10.7M floppy
Extra 3.5 floppy in Subsystem
Modem, printer, etc.
I just managed to get both drives to survive on the bus without "killing
each other off"… I have to use both the newest HDDISK driver (NOT the
old one- that the 2090's setup program OVERWRITES your current one with! )
and the 1.3 BindDrivers command.
The current problem I'm having with the Konica is that I can't seem to
get it to be recognized as a DOS disk (OFS or FFS), or format it. When
I try, it either locks up the SCSI board, or returns a "Not a DOS disk"
alert. Often when I try to access it, it seems to put the driver into
a loop, and both the 2090's access light, and the one on the
drive, come on continuously, with nothing happening.
I talked extensively with Steven Kapplin about this, he sent me a
"universal" SCSI formatting program with which to low-level format the
drive with, but it returns a "Controllers not found" error message.
I'm not sure about low-level formatting, since the A2090 says nothing
about it, and I thought SCSI took care of stuff like that. Steve came
up with a good idea, however: use Quarterback to access the drive- since
it uses it's own format, and bypasses FFS, etc., it could at least
determine if the drive is working. Lo and behold, the first time I tried
it it worked great, …until the last file. Then it came
up with a "Write Error" requestor. Every time I've tried it since then,
it would give me
the error message immediately. I know the diskette is fine, because it
was used effectively 2 days ago on another computer. I'm curious about
whether I need to map out bad sectors, since I know there are at least 2
of them on the disk, being that the format program that the previous owner
used had a whole process it went through (cont. in next msg.)
(cont. from previous)
..(independent of formatting, I think) that mapped them out. The PREP
program asks me if I want to map out any bad sectors, but how do I find
'em?
+ Phil +
(The previous message may look like a mess, but it got eaten by the CIS
text editor and I tried to upload what was in my capture to avoid retyping
the whole silly thing…doe work too well when you have to re-edit all your
deletions- wish there was a program that processed text by recognizing all
the imbedded "delete" characters, and restores the text!)
Phil,
SCSI devices don't necessairly handle bad blocks on their own, it
depends on the controller itself. It's a settable parameter on some
drives, and simply not available on some (such as the Conner). However,
they *should* map them out automatically on a low level format.
I've written a quickie low level format program for generic SCSI
devices..it simply issues the SCSI format command to the device and off it
goes. It's not quite ready for release yet (I'll post it when I'm
done)…mainly because my spare Conner now is really DOA and I really don't
want to test on my other working Conner (but probably will).
All that aside, Konica's drive controller may or may not handle bad
sectors in the "normal" manner. It may require an auxiliary drive.
Again…I'm working on a program that should help in a situation
like this. It'll do read/writes to the drive, and if either
fails…attempt to have the drive re-assign the block. And again…my
problem is not having a spare drive for test work.
No, giving bad sectors to PREP will be of little value…SCSI uses
"logical" blocks…thus any block number can be anywhere on the disk and
it's not possible to determine with any reasonable expectation of accuracy
what cylinder, head, offset to feed PREP>
Don
Hmm… I have a generic SCSI formatter, and it returns an error message
that says "controllers not found"…whatever that means. I think if I
could get that to work, the drive would be fine (other people use it that
way with no problem). The problem seems to be the whole idea of the Amiga
talking to the drive in the first place. When I try to access it, it goes
into some kind of loop and locks up the A2090… stops my HD from working
too. Some kind of communication problem seems to me.
What were you referring to when you said it might need an "auxiliary drive"
to map out bad sectors?
+ Phil +
PS: The other thing the drive does, using Quarterback (which assumably
uses its own formatting) is get a requester that tells me the drive has
write errors. Interestingly enough, when I first used it with QB,
everything was just zooming along until it tried to finish backup up the
last file (I just backed up 800k), whereupon it gave me a "write error"
requester. From then on, every time I try to use the drive with QB, it
immediately tells me there is a write error on the drive.
Phil,
You need to quit QB before trying again because you still have a QB
diskette in the drive which QB has declared unuseable. Exit QB and try
again, if you haven't already tried this. I am beginning to think your
problems may stem from the controller.
Steve
Phil,
There's a bug in the A2090 driver that may cause it to fail with a
generic SCSI low level format program. Also, you need the latest hddisk
file from CBM (it's in LIB 13 as CAHD.ARC).
auxiliary drive? I'll have to go back and see what I said, I'm not
sure what I meant.
Don
Ok, I'll see if the hddisk driver is any newer than the one I have. As I
recall, the last update was something like early last year.
+ Phil +
By the way, I'm also considering an upgrade of my HD driver board sometime
in the future. I want autoboot, no DMA contention, better setup software
and documentation, elimination of the need for OFS partitions if possible,
and support of SCSI devices other than standard hard disks.
The ones that seem to have the biggest following are the HardFrame (which
was my original choice) and the WordSync. According to tests I saw, the
GVP seems a little slower. Also, friends who have very fast 68020 or 68030
boards (there may be a '20 in my future) say that the old Kronus controller
was the best, although it's now unavailable. Apparently there are a lot of
contention issues when you have an accelerator.
Needless to say, I would want it support (in hardware and software) the
Konica 10.7MB drive. I think the Supra and Trumpcard controllers do. Any
preferences for any particular controller?
+ Phil +
Phil,
The Kronos may still be available. Although CLtd is out of
business, I understand the Expansion Technologies will now distribute their
products and that Breck Ricketts has started a new company, Ricketts, Inc.,
in Wichita to continue product development. There was a short on this in
April AmigaWorld in the last few pages of the mag. It also listed an
address for a Wichita company, B&B Electronics, which will handle repairs
and service. If you want to use the Konica, then you need to think about
the Supra controller as well. The Supra will definitely handle the Konica
drive. They list it as one of the drives the Supra has been tested with.
The new 16 bit WordSync is supposed to be pretty fast. I talked with
several people at GVP about their SCSI/8 board and was told that unless you
got special EPROMs it would not handle removable media drives. They only
seem to guarantee support of the Syquest drive and when I asked about
Konica they told me NO. I don't know if they were ill-informed or what,
but that's straight from a GVP tech support person, so I would stay away
from GVP if you keep that Konica. If you want to avoid potential concerns
over CLtd products, then I would give serious thought to the Supra product.
Steve
Once again, thanks for the info Steve. Now, if I can get a handle on which
one of the cards handles accelerator cards with the least amount of
contention, I'll have most of the info I need to make a decision.
+ Phil +
Phil,
My personal preference would be for the Commodore board….mainly
because I've seen too many "quirks" with 3rd party products (for whatever
reason).
As to my preference between the HardFrame and the WordSync…I have
no preference between them since I've not used either product so don't have
any experience to base an opinion on.
Don
Ok, fair enough. How would you say the 2091 compares to the 2090 (non"A"
type)?
Particularly in terms of speed, under best/worst conditions, compatibility
with accelerators, and documentation/setup. Does the 2091 still require
that silly OFS partition? Are the docs still pathetic?
+ Phil +
Phil,
Ah…that was a slight mis-type:
auxiliary drive == auxiliary driver
Software that will handle re-mapping of bad blocks vs having that
done in hardware.
Don
Don,
The Konica doesn't need an auxiliary drive. It is a true SCSI
device with built in controller. The format program I sent to Phil came
with my Cltd controller and I thought that it might work, but it turns out
that it must be specific to the Cltd controller, which it doesn't find on
the buss. I use the Cltd GenFormat program to initialize the diskettes for
the Konica and it does map out bad sectors if it finds any, which the
AmigaDos format command will not do. Phil has gotten the drive to sort of
work with Quarterback, but apparently it did not 'go all the way'. I
wonder if the A2090A controller will not handle removable media drives?
Perhaps you could advise him on this because I know nothing about CBM's
controllers. I know that GVP's controllers need a special EPROM to handle
removable media drives, and I told Phil that could be a problem with CBM's,
but I just don't know. If Quarterback was accessing the Konica, then
something is working, but why it dies on the last file is a mystery to me.
I think that his problems may be traceable to the controller. I know the
Konica drive survives nicely on my system and lived quite confortably on my
old A1000. I use the Cltd Kronos controllers in my machines. If you have
any good advice for PHil, please help him out.
Steve