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From: easton@zds-oem.zds.com (Jeff Easton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy
Subject: Re: Hi Capacity Floppies & Ami [Was Re: Give the Amiga Some Cred
Message-ID: <1991Jun20.123730.16415@zds-oem.zds.com>
Date: 20 Jun 91 12:37:30 GMT
References: <6369@mindlink.bc.ca>
Organization: Zenith Data Systems, OEM Systems Engineering
Lines: 36

In article <6369@mindlink.bc.ca> Harvey_Taylor@mindlink.bc.ca (Harvey Taylor) writes:

[...]

>    Yeah, but there are other solutions. I have the TEAC FD-235JS SCSI Floppy
> on my system. This gives me 2.88M & 1.44 M capacities. It works with the
> CrossDOS MsdosFileSystem too. At approx US$200, this drive is a viable
> alternative.
>    -het
>
>    PS.
>    I wonder why nobody has stuck a generic floppy controller chip on a board
> and written a driver... Seems like a natural.

  I was wondering this myself, until I realized that most generic floppy
controller chips dont contain a FIFO.  This could be a big problem in
the Amiga.  When a data transfer is started, the data streams off the 
floppy at a fixed rate.  If the CPU isnt there to catch it, (off
multitasking somewere else) data will be lost.  Adding a FIFO'ed 
floppy controller would help because now the controller chip can buffer
some of the bytes until the CPU can service it.  The same problem
is showing up in EISA machines, when a bus master takes over the bus
for so long, the system misses data on the floppy controller.

  One way to solve this on the Amiga is to use a dedicated microcontroller
and a dual ported RAM design,  much like the Commodore 7 port serial
card works.  This is beyond most of the hacker type projects.

> Harvey Taylor      Meta Media Productions


        Jeff Easton               Zenith Data Systems
     // Systems Engineer 
   \X/  easton%zds-oem@caspian.cs.andrews.edu
	easton@andrews.edu	
   What?  Preemptive Multitasking in only 256K of RAM?  :^)  :^)