Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!rutgers!rochester!rit!ultb!ajy2208
From: ajy2208@ultb.isc.rit.edu (A.J. Yarusso)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: MIO board and imbedded SCSI drives...
Summary: Give me a break!
Message-ID: <2515@ultb.isc.rit.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 90 17:53:11 GMT
References: <1872@crash.cts.com> <2514@ultb.isc.rit.edu>
Reply-To: ajy2208@ultb.isc.rit.edu (A.J. Yarusso)
Organization: Information Systems and Computing @ RIT, Rochester, New York
Lines: 52

In article <2514@ultb.isc.rit.edu> clf3678@ultb.isc.rit.edu (C.L. Freemesser) writes:
>In article <1872@crash.cts.com> jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) writes:
>>I got an ICD 1989-1990 product catalog yesterday and I went looking through it
>>and it says that the MIO does not support imbedded SCSI drives.  Does this
>>mean that a drive such as a Seagate ST157N will not work?  Also, what's the
>>status of the T-816 and MIO board playing nice together?
>> 
>>     // JCA
>I have seen the T-816.  It's not that great.
>
>As for the MIO, it's probably the most unpredictable interface ever made
>for the 8-bits.  It can work perfectly on one machine, and really flake
>out on another.  It's non-support of embedded SCSI drive (such as the
>ST157N) is good proof of its poor design.

Aww come on Chris, you're a bit biased because you know the designer of
the Black Box, and it seems a lot of people here in Rochester have a slanted
opinion of ICD since CSS lives here.

I used to run a board on an MIO for over a year, and aside from one
problem I had with a 256K version (a very very old one with a serial
number of about 120), I think the MIO was a fantastic piece of
engineering.  An RS232 port, Centronics printer port, SCSI/SASI port,
either 256K or 1Meg of RAM, and excellent built-in firmware!  

>The Black Box from Computer Software Services is an excellent product.
>Not only is it fast and well-designed, but has many extra features.  A
>future add-on board will let you hook up generic drive mechs in
>PARALLEL!  It has the parallel/serial/HD ports, with the Serial handling
>9600 baud perfectly.  It plugs into the parallel bus on the 800xl,
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I never had a problem with 9600 on the MIO.  I also used 19,200 with it.

>600xl, and 130xe.  It comes with both connectors (unlike the MIO).
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
bit deal, that's just a marketting decision.  If you don't have an XE,
you save money because they don't have to give you a connector you
don't need.

>The only thing it does NOT have is a Ramdisk.  One other thing:  it lets
>you put full boot floppies on your HD!

They may be a bit late with this..  ICD came out with the MIO several
years ago.  :-)

>Chris Freemesser, Rochester Institute of Technology (  THE ACORN BBS

_____________________________________________________________________________
 Albert Yarusso, Rochester     ajy2208@ritvax.bitnet
 Institute of Tech. _________________________________________________________
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