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From: greg@isrnix.UUCP (Gregory Travis)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Need info re: hard disks
Message-ID: <879@isrnix.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Nov-87 10:24:02 EST
Article-I.D.: isrnix.879
Posted: Sat Nov  7 10:24:02 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Nov-87 06:47:57 EST
Organization: Inst. for Social Research (Indiana University, 47405)
Lines: 20
Keywords: devices drivers disk speed

I have a Xebec 20 Meg hard disk drive connected to my A1000.  I recently
saw an A2000 with an internal hard disk and was amazed at how it compared
(speed-wise) to mine.  The disk itself wasn't that much faster in terms of
seek time and the transfer rate was the same.  I assume that the controller
was commodore's DMA controller.  Mine is all PIO (-although I was led to
believe otherwise when I bought it-*sigh*) but I can't imagine that that makes
that much of a difference.  The software consists of tasks that run as
"SCSI.DEVICE" and "DH0" - which I assume is the AmigaDOS handler for it.
Is there any way to substitute the Commodore software (i.e. hd.device)?
I have mucho experience with PDP11s and how devices appear on the Unibus
but have no idea about how software communicates with disk controller hardware
on the Amiga - does the controller present itself in memory?  Are the
locations vendor-specific, or generic?  How about the commands?
If I could speed up this thing (right now it does about 30k/sec, which is
horrible) I would be really happy.
-- 
 Gregory R. Travis
 Institute for Social Research - Indiana University - Bloomington, IN 47405
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