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From: kiki@uhunix1.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Jack W. Wine)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st.tech
Subject: Re: SCSI chip project
Message-ID: <12850@uhccux.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu>
Date: 4 May 91 17:25:26 GMT
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>The trouble is that WD1772 is discontinued now. And ATARI cannot possibly
>sell anything if they don't get this chip or its equivalent. And there
>is no additional cost to put something like FDC92C36, which consumes less
>power and accepts high density. Therefore people will be having 1.44 MB
>drives when they buy the cheapest ATARI ST very soon. No worry, I hope.

This sounds reasonable.  I wonder how much of a supply of WD 1772 chips
does Atari have left?  Also, how much did it cost to reverse-engineer the
1772 chip?  Was doing that cheaper than a board redesign with a chip like
the FDC 92C36 you recommend?  Who is responsible for these decisions?

>I have experience of using NCR53C80, but it is not particularly remarkable.
>It is just one of the SCSI chips. It will be a good idea to abandon the
>traditional DMA interface and accommodate only a MAC style SCSI port,
>urging people to buy MAC peripherals. But I would think a floppy disk
>controller will be still useful especially because OS needs no fix.

I don't have any SCSI experience, but one thing I noticed in reviews of
peripherals using the ST ASCI (and Mac SCSI) port is that they are severely
limited by the short cable length brought on by not following ANSI SCSI
specs.  I think ST owners want to be able to connect hard drives, PCs with
SCSI, A/D D/A converters, etc. at a physical distance that is convenient to
_them_, not their ST.

I am beginning to become more convinced that the OS should not be in rom,
but on a JEIDA standard ramcard.  They are available in 4 MB capacity and
a 12 MB ramcard will be out soon.  Since JEIDA specs allow ramcards up to
64 MB, Atari Unix may eventually be distributed on these things.  Performing
OS updates would just mean downloading some code either from an Atari or local
dealer's BBS.  Since the new ST Notebook is using them, I am hopeful Atari
will put JEIDA sockets on future lines of desktop STs.

One idea that I have for older STs is a JEIDA ramcard drive connected to
the ASCI-SCSI bus.  TOS would be patched to load in an OS stored on a ram-
card.  The drive would have extra sockets so that you can have hundreds of
megabytes online.  
 
>I have one internal 3.5" and one external 5" drive, both of which cope
>with normal density and high density. What has been most impressive is
>that I have never required any software to make use of this. Even Minix
>has been very happy with them. 

If you are satisfied with your present arrangement, then that is great, but
I just want to investigate another option.  Floppy controllers can only con-
trol floppy (or tape) drives; the SCSI controller provides hardware general-
ization that blends nicely with the software paradigm of data abstraction.
But the SCSI flexibility is crippled when manufacturers take shortcuts in
implementing the standard and I believe most people would like to utilize
their systems to its full potential.


Jack