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From: baxt@pnet51.cts.com (Bill Backstrom)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech,comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Pal, Jr. HD controller info needed
Message-ID: <727@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 1 Jul 89 01:25:05 GMT
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Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 74

>In article <292@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu> lofaso@titan.UUCP (Bernie Lofaso)
writes:
>>I have a PAL, Jr. expansion chassis for my A1000. This unit has what is
>>essentially a 2090 hard disk controller on a Zorro I form factor.  I'm using
>>it with an ST506 interface (a Seagate ST225 disk). Although I have been
>
>yes; its pretty much the same design.
>
>>happy with the unit, after running DiskPerf I found that I was actually
>>getting pretty slow transfer rates - about 50k/sec.  My disk is formatted
>>with the FFS and is running 1.3.  I have read postings of much higer
transfer
>>rates using the 2090/2090A and am wondering why my set-up is so slow. I
>
>it doesn't sounds like you are really running FFS.  Check it with
>

Yeah! I'm not alone...

I have a B2000 with a 2090 and a ST296N (85 meg SCSI). I'm running
1.3, definitely using FFS (512 byte blocks) and version 34.4 of
hddisk.  

Diskperf gives me a reads of about 80K bytes/sec and writes of 155K
bytes/s for 32K blocks. I've also had an ST125 (20 meg ST-506) on the
controller and got reads of 165K bytes/s and writes of 120K bytes/s. 
Nothing special is going on - no hi-res with overscan and interlace,
etc.

Following is a mountlist entry for the first FFS partition of the drive:

u3p1:
    Device = hddisk.device
    FileSystem = l:FastFileSystem
    Unit   = 3
    Flags  = 0
    Surfaces  = 6
    BlocksPerTrack = 34
    Reserved = 2
    Interleave = 0
    LowCyl = 4  ;  HighCyl = 407
    Buffers = 30
    GlobVec = -1
    BufMemType = 4
    Mount = 1
    DosType = 0x444F5301
    StackSize = 4000
#

I have tried different interleaves, another 2090 card, and various
partition sizes. Nothing has improved the performance. The only
unusual thing I've noticed apart from the low data transfer rates is
that I could not prep the drive with my controller, I had to use my
dealer's 2090A. 

I'm out of ideas and would appreciate any suggestions (of course
sympathy is always welcome too). Thanks. 

Bill Backstrom

>>Bernie Lofaso
>-- 
>andy finkel             {uunet|rutgers|amiga}!cbmvax!andy
>Commodore-Amiga, Inc.
>
>  "It's in there."
>
>Any expressed opinions are mine; but feel free to share.
>I disclaim all responsibilities, all shapes, all sizes, all colors.


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