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From: jph@ais.org (Joseph Hillenburg)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: More info on A2091 woes
Message-ID: <2AS+-%$@irie.ais.org>
Date: 15 Jan 91 23:03:25 GMT
References: <9696@cica.cica.indiana.edu>
Sender: jph@ais.org
Organization: UMCC, Ann Arbor, MI
Lines: 62

In article <9696@cica.cica.indiana.edu> greg@cica.indiana.edu (Gregory TRAVIS) writes:
>My (new, yea!) local Commodore dealer just called me back with some
>information she finally got out of Commodore Tech support regarding
>the awful A2091 controller.  Now, don't take this as gospel but the
>dealer said that Commodore has a chip upgrade availavble now
>for $34.70 that fixes problems with certain 3rd party software.  Now,
>I've never had that problem.  My problem is that I STILL cannot use
>an external drive with the A2091 using Commodore's driver
>software.
>
>For those of you who are unfamiliar with the problem, if you try and
>hook more than one drive to the 2091, all will appear OK until something
>goes out there and hammers on both drives simultaneously.  At that
>point the system will hang waiting on the controller which has
>failed.  Commodore will attempt to drag a red-herring in front of you by
>claiming that the drive you're using does not conform to SCSI specs.
>This is a blatant lie as I have hooked two Quantum P40s (as orginally
>shipped from Commodore) to my machine and seen the lock-up.  I've also
>demonstrated the problem with a wide variety of other drives (Miniscribe,
>Maxtor, CDC wren) that we use routinely around the lab here on other
>machines without problems.
>
>Commodore tech support indicated to my dealer that they were working
>on the problem but a fix would not be available for some time.
>
>Just to cross-check, I called CPU (the dealer from whom I bought the
>machine a year ago) up in Indianapolis and they had the same story.
>
>My local dealer said they called because they were having trouble with
>external SCSI devices (CD-ROM) attached to an A2091 controller.

Seeing as I'm from Bloomington, Indiana, same as you, I thought I'd comment
on this... I've talked to the people at Digital Arts, and it didn't work on
the A3000 either. The CURRENT problem is the Xetec CD-ROM drivers are
screwed. You can run programs off the disk, etc, but you CAN'T copy from it!
This happened when they had it hooked up to both the 3000 and 2091.

>
>I would strongly advise people to REFUSE TO BUY any system with the
>A2091 unless it's thrown in free.  This controller was garbage when it
>was designed years ago and continues to be garbage to this day.
>

This is pure bullshit. the A2091 is an excellent controller, and is _very_ new.
This is the ONLY problem with it (not handling multiple drives correctly...)
I have one, it's very fast. It sounds like you are talking about the 2090
series.

>
>
>
>-- 
>Gregory R. Travis                Indiana University, Bloomington IN 47405
>greg@cica.cica.indiana.edu       Center for Innovative Computer Applications
>Disclaimer:  Everything I say is true and I never lie.

Ever been to a BAUG meeting?

-- 
   //   Joseph Hillenburg, Secretary, Bloomington Amiga Users Group
 \X/  joseph@valnet.UUCP     jph@irie.ais.org          jph@ai.mit.edu
       "Only Apple could slow down a 68030 chip" --Computer Shopper