SCSI

Greetings,
I am hopefully about to get an A4K, and i'm thinking about adding a SCSI drive to it, but i have NEVER had any dealings with SCSI before, so my request is this...

good someone give me a good SCSI guide? what will i need? how do you "terminate"? is it worth doing? etc, a step by step tutorial would be nice if anyone knows where one is?


cheers, JuvUK

Hiyas m8y

Any DMA SCSI card will be faster than the native IDE on the Amiga -

not only can it transfer faster, it also does this WITHOUT CPU LOAD, which is emminently awesome (and you must have it)

Even a Zorro 2, GVP HC+8 Series SCSI controller will outperform the native ide BIG TIME -

With an 060@50 pushing the native IDE you will be lucky to see 2MB per second. in the process of this your 060 will be hung-up doing it.

With a GVP HC+8 and a standard 68000@7.5 it can perform upto 3.5MB with NO cpu load. (although in testing this on my A2000 a while back you could expect upto 2.4MB *considering you dont see 1MB on the native ide* )

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Imnogeek and I are here to help and provide you with all that you need for the wonderfull beauty of SCSI =D (including cables and if needed terminators)

you will need need to get a SCSI solution for your A4000 -

For Zorro 3 = Fastlane, you will need a Buster update, but its the better card in this area

expect around 7MB Async transfer and 10MB sync transfer

by far the best solution on the A4000 is the Cyberstorm Mk 3, it has SCSI 3 onbard (upto 40MB a sec)

Not so convoluted as a brain surgery, but have some caveats.

1- termination: just the first and last device must have it and both must be the same type. If the controller have a passive terminator, you must use another of those at the end of cable or in the last physical device on the cable.

If you will use external devices, then you need to remove the termination on the controller and provide another one on the last external device.

2-ID: all devices must have a different ID (from 0 to 7). The controller itself normally is unit 7. Prefer your boot HD to be unit 0 (no jumpers on the ID pins).

More as you got the controller.

Oh: all SCSI drives will work, some with a proper gender adaptor.

what about these?

Oktagon 2008

A2091 SCSI Controller




GVP Impact II

Great Valley Products a2000-HC8 Series II

http://www.cablemakers.com/scsitermination.htm

That link helped me out with my CSPPC Scsi termination when I have a bus with both fastscsi2 and wide scsi on it.

so are any of the mentioned scsi cards any good?

@Juv

I have a GVP HC+8 in my A2000, and it works flawlessly providing good DMA HD transfer due to having onboard RAM..
It is ZII card however & although will function in the A4000, with as Zetr0 has stated better performance than the onboard IDE (no CPU Hit).
A ZIII solution would be much better, Keep your eyes open for a Z3 Fastlane SCSI..

TC :)

Or an accelerator with a onboard SCSI controller, like the Warp Engine or Cyberstorms.

Drop the Apollo ones, BTW: they are pure crap (no DMA, emulated chip, poll transfers).

lol @ all, you lot must think i'm made of money!!! accelerator indeed!! fastlanes!! lol

will the GVP HC+8 work and be better than the ide? will the miggy boot from the scsi disk? is the Oktagon 2008 any good?cheers, JuvUK

I don't know much about the different cards available Juv but as Kieth mentioned earlier any SCSI card will be better than the onboard IDE it is just that some are better than others.

I'll leave it for somebody else to comment on the GVP HC+8 and Oktagon2008 who knows what they are talking about :whistle:

Once you get the card SCSI is simple just give us a bell if you get stuck.

Gary