Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!medsys!wendell
From: wendell@medsys.UUCP (bbs amiga user)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Which SCSI interface???
Message-ID: <795@medsys.UUCP>
Date: 4 Aug 89 22:32:20 GMT
References: <10467@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: Med-Systems, Kingsport, TN
Lines: 29

rademach@tramp.Colorado.EDU (Simon Rademacher) writes:


>Has anybody heard anything about the Xetec controller (esp. for the 500)?
>Would it be worth the $239 the local store wants?  I would suspect its DMA
>and hence a little better than the Supra.

>Thanks

>=======================================
>=          Simon Rademacher           =
>= rademach%tramp@boulder.colorado.edu =

Simon, I also asked this question a while back, and in no uncertain terms
was recommended away from the Xetec controller. Seems it dies on very large
program loads. The fix is to make the Max Transfer value something like
128K, so the drive has to load larger files in 2 or more requests. From
what I've gathered, this fix would have to be run every time you boot up
and is not a good fix at that. The controller uses what the company terms
DMAx which is just a very efficient processor-intensive approach. A salesman
at Lightspeed Distribution told me that the rating Amiga World gave the
Xetec controller was downright lies! He also said that same about their review
of the Supra, (AmigaWorld said it only got 50K/sec reads or some such 
nonsense). If you find out any other pertinent info concerning this
or any other 500 controllers, I'd appreciate hearing about them.

--
Wendell Dingus
UUCP: uunet!medsys!wendell