Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!nosc!crash!pnet01!jca From: jca@pnet01.cts.com (John C. Archambeau) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit Subject: Re: MIO board and imbedded SCSI drives... Message-ID: <1915@crash.cts.com> Date: 23 Mar 90 04:56:05 GMT Sender: root@crash.cts.com Organization: People-Net [pnet01], El Cajon CA Lines: 99 ajy2208@ultb.isc.rit.edu (A.J. Yarusso) writes: >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! If it's really a SCSI port, then I should be able to hang an ST157N on it, correct? It ain't really SCSI, probably some brain damaged subset. That isn't going to cut it. Why should I have to buy an ST412/506 hard drive with a SCSI -> ST412/506 host adaptor when it is supposed to be functionally equivalent to an embedded SCSI drive? It's also cheaper to buy the embedded SCSI drive, especially in my position. >>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 If the MIO doesn't support embedded SCSI drives such as the ST157N which I can get quite cheaply since I work for a Seagate authorized dealer, then it is a poor design. SCSI is SCSI, now admittedly there are several implementations of SCSI such as Mac, ANSI, CCS, and SCSI-2, but I don't see the logic as to why one would need a SCSI->ST412/506 host adaptor to plug a hard drive into an MIO board, is this a marketing decision by ICD so you have to buy such a board to drive your damned MIO board with a hard drive? The decision of whether I go with an MIO or a Black Box hinges on how much of a pain in the rear and how much I get hit in the wallet in rebuilding an 8-bit system. Also, how the MIO plays with the T-816 board is another factor. If the Black Box will work with the T-816 100% and support drives such as an ST157N or perhaps even an ST1096N then obviously that would be the better solution to storage. I think from a power user's perspective... Will this piece of hardware handicap me? Apparently the MIO board will. The biggest MFM ST412/506 drive I've seen is a 120 Mb. Now anybody who knows anything about the 65816 knows that it can beat the hell out of an 80286 if the proper motherboard is designed around it regardless of what AMD and Harris do to enhance the 80286. Now think of this, if you have a powerful enough machine, you damn well are going to need as much hard drive space as you can get. I have yet to see an actual limit to embedded SCSI drives. Hell, I've put 400 Mb CDC's in Mac's, now if you people want to see the 8-bit evolve into a 16-bit machine (which is what the T-816 is for) along with evolve into a 32-bit machine (there is a 65832 on the drawing board), then you had better question these stupid design flaws which I do all the time. There's a difference between dare to be different and dare to be stupid. I don't put up with stupidity in systems I configure and install whether they be Sun workstations, Macintoshes, or IBM compatables and I sure as hell won't tolerate it with the systems I have at home that I play with whether they be 386 machines, Atari ST's (if I ever decide to finally get one, I won't unless somebody makes an ethernet board for them), or Atari XL/XE. // JCA /* **--------------------------------------------------------------------------* ** Flames : /dev/null | My opinions are exactly that, ** ARPANET : crash!pnet01!jca@nosc.mil | mine. 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