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From: Ordania-DM@cup.portal.com (Charles K Hughes)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.8bit
Subject: Re: MIO board and imbedded SCSI drives...
Message-ID: <28202@cup.portal.com>
Date: 23 Mar 90 20:50:27 GMT
References: <1915@crash.cts.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 89

jca@pnet01.cts.com writes:
>>>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.

  I've had this problem, but it is related to the lousy PBI on the Atari, not
to the MIO itself.

>>
>>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.
>>
>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.

  You can hang an embedded SCSI drive on the MIO.  However, one of the 
Seagate embedded drives is "braindead" - it won't allow 256 byte sectors.
This is not the fault of the MIO.  The MIO is not (I think) a full 
implementation of SCSI, but then few things are. :)

>
>>>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,

  That future add-on board has been in the future for at least a year now.

>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>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
Charles_K_Hughes
@cup.portal.com