Re: SCSI drive replacement using SD?

On 2014-11-03 10:38, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> On 11/03/2014 12:10 AM, silverdr@wfmh.org.pl wrote:
>> Most Amigas either use or can use IDE/PATA. For those you can connect a
>> decent CF card with only mechanical interface. My Amigas run on those
>> for a long time already.
>
> I think this is an overstatement.

Not really. Maybe the wording is what made you think so. I wrote: 
"either use" in the sense have available OOB "or can use" in the sense 
that it can be added.

> Basically only the last series of
> Amigas came with an IDE controller (the Gayle chip) and those
> were the 600, the 1200 and the 4000.

Right.

> All other Amigas either shipped
> with on-board SCSI (like the 3000) or didn't have an on-board
> controller at all (1000, 500, 500+, 2000) and if they had a controller,
> it was SCSI in most cases.

Initially yes, as IDE was perceived inferior. But later on this changed 
and I think IDE was available for all Amigas in one form or another. At 
least I had for all except A1000.

> Also, most SCSI controllers are much faster on the Amiga in my
> experience

Not only yours. My SCSI based controllers were 2-3 times faster than 
contemporary IDE. IDE controllers at the time worked with polled IO 
principle, which made it slow, CPU hungry and ugly in all corners. But 
the drives were cheap so people used it anyway. Things changed once PCs 
made the "breakthrough" and DMA was introduced to their IDE controllers. 
My absolutely fastest Amiga drive is a CF card connected to "FastATA" 
controller in an Amiga 4000. It beats all the SCSI solutions I ever had 
in terms of speed. Including "CyberSCSI", "WarpEngine", "FastLANE", 
"Blizzard", ...

> Thus, the only current solution for most Amigas to use a modern,
> quiet and fast hard disk or flash device is to buy one of these
> SCSI-IDE bridges which are quite expensive. I was lucky to buy one
> off eBay which was attached to a Yamaha CRW-F1 drive and paid
> just around 35 Euros for the drive including the bridge. Normally
> those bridges cost more than 100 Euros.

Even substantially more. I think I paid something like 160 or so some 
time ago for the ACARDs. I also paid a hefty sum (albeit smaller - I 
think something like $110) for a Japanese one that didn't really work.

> However, if anyone knows a cheaper method to replace old SCSI drives
> on my Amigas and 68k-Macs, I would be very happy to hear.

I'll be checking the Australian one hopefully soon. Not too cheap (some 
$80) but if the performance issues are indeed gone then it'd be at least 
somewhat less expensive alternative.

-- 
SD!

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