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From: kellym@shark.UUCP (Kelly McArthur)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Fraud And Deceit In The Memory Board Market
Message-ID: <1811@shark.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 30-Jun-86 16:31:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1811
Posted: Mon Jun 30 16:31:14 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 2-Jul-86 04:29:25 EDT
References: <1353@well.UUCP>
Reply-To: kellym@shark.UUCP (Kelly McArthur)
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 58
Keywords: A *purported* Buyer's Guide

In article <1353@well.UUCP> perry@well.UUCP (Perry S. Kivolowitz) writes:
>Since there has been a  lot of discussion of memory boards in this newsgroup
>it is important that this be the forum for some truths about memory products
>for the Amiga.
>

I certainly support any efforts to disseminate information about new
Amiga products, but I feel that the vindictive tone of this article was
a bit much. Sounds like Mr. Kivolowitz himself may have gotten burned
on some un-named memory product.

Having previously posted some remarks on CardCo's aMEGA board, I feel
inclined to offer the following information: 

>(1) Power Availablility Is Limited To ONE AMP.
>.....

I measured a *Production* board as drawing ~390 mA. It is low because
of a CMOS controller chip, not because it uses expensive CMOS ram chips.
In addition, the board layout has provisions for an external supply.

I know that a few pre-production boards with non-CMOS controllers and 
two-layer ECB's were floating around back during Comdex. I can't imagine
anyone thinking that one of these was representative of a production
unit, but who knows? I suppose that could exlain Perry's concern...

>(2) All FAST-RAM Boards Are Not FAST.
.....[some boards induce excessive wait states]

Well, I didn't happen to look at it on a logic analyzer, but I didn't notice
that programs executed slower out of "fast" ram than out of "chip" ram.
Remember that occasional wait states will be introduced on any board 
to arbitrate between refresh and access cycles.

>(3) Memory Boards Are Particularly Prone To NOISE
>.....[EMI, etc]

The aMEGA card has both a four-layer board and a metal housing. My 
understanding is that it has passed FCC.


>The ONLY memory products I've seen that pass ALL of the tests are:
>
>	o	The mother board memory on the Byte-By-Byte expansion
>		chassis.
>	o	The Convertible(TM) series of memory boards by ASDG, Inc.
>		(General Availablility: Late August).
>

This is the really nasty part of the message. To use Mr. Kivolowitz's 
notation, I hope that HE has in fact looked at ALL the products
that are available and is NOT making SWEEPING GENERALIZATIONS about
manufacturers that have not gone out of their way to obtain the 
"Kivolowitz-Seal-Of-Approval"


					Kelly McArthur
			{declabs...ihnp4...hplabs}!tektronix!shark!kellym