Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!ginosko!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!cbmvax!daveh
From: daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 68030 Accelerators, Info Wanted
Message-ID: <8265@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 25 Oct 89 14:05:12 GMT
References: <19997@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 40

in article <19997@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, ejkst@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Eric J. Kennedy) says:

> In article <8182@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes:

>>The [GVP '030] controller is 16 bit, non-DMA.  It's bascially a PC-AT 
>>expansion bus.

> Then why did they bother?  

They had room left over on the '030 board, and an AT bus hard drive interface
only costs a couple of dollars.  This might give them an edge in selling the
board, since for folks who don't yet have a hard drive controller, this lets
them buy the controller and '030 accelerator in one.  

> I figured if they go to the trouble of adding a hard drive controller to 
> the accelerator card, there would at least be some reason for it, some 
> distinguishing characteristic.  

They're distinguishing the '030 board, not the controller.  Commodore chose to
distinguish their board by providing built-in 32 bit memory, but that's not
the way to make a bargain-basement '030 board.

> The way they've done it, you're paying for a sub-par controller that you 
> most likely won't want if you're building a fast system.  Unvelievable.

IF you can find an imbedded AT drive with decent performance, it's likely that
this drive could be as fast as the SCSI controller GVP makes for the Amiga
bus, though not likely as fast as a good DMA controller.  It's certainly faster
than the simple 8-bit SCSI controllers you can get cheap these days, so I'd
guess this would be somewhere in the "medium-performance" category.  Though
it's a hard call; the AT bus characteristic is only 1/2 the question -- their
interface between that '030 and the AT bus could be a big factor.

> Eric Kennedy
> ejkst@cis.unix.pitt.edu

-- 
Dave Haynie Commodore-Amiga (Systems Engineering) "The Crew That Never Rests"
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                    Too much of everything is just enough