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From: dcall@dadla.TEK.COM (Dale Call;6291513;92-725;LP=A;60QC)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: A2000 questions
Message-ID: <2491@zeus.TEK.COM>
Date: Mon, 5-Oct-87 17:09:09 EDT
Article-I.D.: zeus.2491
Posted: Mon Oct  5 17:09:09 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 9-Oct-87 01:27:29 EDT
References: <176@tahoma.ARPA>
Sender: news@zeus.TEK.COM
Reply-To: dcall@amadeus.UUCP (Dale Call)
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR.
Lines: 39

In article <176@tahoma.ARPA> bakken@tahoma.ARPA (Dave Bakken) writes:
>
>2)  	Amiga World (March/April '87) stated that the SCSI controller
>	board CA was developing had a data transfer rate of 1.2 MByte/sec.  I 
>	have seen new SCSI chips announced in the last 6 months that sport
>	4-5MByte/sec rates with quantity prices in the $16-25 range.  Is 
>	there a chance this board will incorporate these new chips?  If
>	not, this seems like a good opportunity for a 3rd party company
>	(wink, wink @ Perry).
>
>	BTW, approximately what is the data transfer rate of an ST506
>	drive, an AT hard card [which may be the same as ST506 for all
>	I know - I'm blissfully ignorant of the IBM PC compatible 
>	world  :-)  ], and of the current A1000 floppy drives?   How
>	much can 40MB SCSI drives be found for, and how is this likely
>	to change in the next year (don't the new Macs have SCSI ports
>	or peripheral boards?) ?

A ST506 drive transfers at 5 Mbits -> 500 Kbytes per second.  If the
SCSI disk controller uses RLL or enhanced RLL, the transfer rate goes
up (up to 1 Mbyte per second with enhanced RLL, I think).  Therefore
unless you use a different interface drive (maybe EDSI, SMD, etc.) you
aren't going to exceed the maximum transfer rate of the A2090 (?)
controller board.  Faster SCSI chips won't buy you much.  What would be
more important is whether or not the drive does internal buffering of
multiple sectors.  A 40Mb embedded SCSI drive will run around $600 -
$700.  An Adaptec controller ($130) with an ST506 40Mb drive ($400 ?)
will be cheaper, but requires more room.  The other problem limiting
hard drives is of course AmigaDOS itself, but we really don't need to
rehash this subject.  Hopefully ASDG's SDP will help here ...

>5)	How much will the LP monitor and the 2MB and 8MB memory boards
>	cost (both minimally and fully poplated), and when will they be 
>	readily available?  

My dealer quoted $399 for the 2Mb memory board from CA.  No data on LP
monitor or 8Mb board.

Dale Call