Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!ukc!reading!onion!minster!martin
From: martin@minster.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st
Subject: ST/020 DMA, and Disk driver bug. (ATARI - please read!)
Message-ID: <542288243.24960@minster.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Mar-87 06:37:24 EST
Article-I.D.: minster.542288243.24960
Posted: Mon Mar  9 06:37:24 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Mar-87 00:49:25 EST
Reply-To: martin@minster.UUCP (martin)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of York, England
Lines: 56

Part 1:
=======

In article <1138@chinet.UUCP> cabbie@chinet.UUCP (Richard Andrews) writes:
>In article <579@atari.UUCP> neil@atari.UUCP (Neil Harris) writes:
>>As a matter of fact, the system you describe is almost exactly what we're
>>working on.  In the works is a 68020-based system which has none of its own
>>I/O except for a pair of DMA ports.  It will plug into the back of a current
>>ST computer and act as a high-powered number cruncher.  The 68881 and
>>Motorola MMU will also be part of the hardware, with UNIX system V or some
>>close relation being the software part.  The ST acts as a "genius terminal".

Regarding the two DMA ports... Wouldn't this be an excellent oportunity to
replace (at least one) of the DMA ports with a proper interface, such as SCSI.

At the moment many people just go out and buy an Atari DMA -> SCSI adapter,
but this only gives them a broken version of SCSI. Elsewhere Atari have
supported standards, but in this area they have been ignored. Is it because
Atari are afraid people will go and buy cheap SCSI disks from other vendors,
since Atari disks are relatively expensive, and slow?

Part 2
======

While I'm talking about Hard disks, has anyone else noticed that the disk
Rwabs operation (read/write sectors), takes a sector number which
is a 16-bit number!!!! This is the most UTTERLY STUPID thing I have seen
on the Atari yet, and may render it impossible to use for a system I
have in development! This places a hard limit on 32Mbytes/partition,
and 128Mbytes/disk, now I was planning on using one of the new MAXTOR
760MByte drives, or possibly the Northern Telecom 820MByte drive
(No flames please, I NEED this sort of storage!!).

And please don't say `But you can't use this, since GEMDOS can't work
with a partition bigger than 16Mbytes', This is irrelevant, I am using
my own filing system. But I did expect to be able to use the ATARI hard
disk driver!

Yours, extremely annoyed,

	Martin

PS
	Landon Dyer, you wrote the driver (although I realise the specification
had probably already been decided), are you listening?

--
usenet: mcvax!ukc!minster!martin

Martin C. Atkins
Composer's Desktop Project |	and	|
c/o Department of Music	   |		|	Department of Computer Science
University of York
Heslington
York Y01 5DD
U.K.