Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!decwrl!shelby!rutgers!cbmvax!steveb
From: steveb@cbmvax.commodore.com (Steve Beats)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: 3000 autobooting a 1096N
Message-ID: <13786@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 14 Aug 90 09:46:09 GMT
References: <754.26C4F281@weyr.FIDONET.ORG> <13766@cbmvax.commodore.com> <1990Aug13.225301.23877@uncecs.edu>
Reply-To: steveb@cbmvax (Steve Beats)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 27

In article <1990Aug13.225301.23877@uncecs.edu> urjlew@uncecs.edu (Rostyk Lewyckyj) writes:
>
>Mr. Beats
>Can Seagate 1096N drives be used successfully for booting, by computers
>from other companies? If so how do they handle the problem that the
>C= DOS 2.0 software on the Amiga is unable to cope with?
Yes, other computers can boot from a Seagate 1096N but they`ll take forever
to do it.  Also, you won`t find it anywhere near as easy to configure the
drive for booting as it is under 2.0.  No other computer that I know of has
the flexibility of HD installation provided under 2.0.  The SCSI driver on
the 2091/A590/A3000 is designed to make nearly ALL drives plug-n-play.  When
you support so many different SCSI drives (with all their attendant wrinkles
in SCSI implementation) a few are going to be sub-optimal.  

If you read my posting properly you will notice that DOS 2.0 CAN cope with
booting from a 1096N, it just needs the preferences editor to twiddle the
appropriate bits to set Seagate mode on.  

To re-iterate: if a drive does not respond to selection then it`s as if
that drive is not even connected to the SCSI bus!  If the drive is not
connected it can`t be booted from.  There is a very real limit to the amount
of time a driver can spend dead-looping waiting for a possibly non-existant
drive to spin up.  If I made the driver wait >30seconds on every boot cycle
I`d have MANY more complaints from owners of other drives about the long
boot time.  `fraid I can`t make everyone happy all the time!

	Steve