Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!srcsip!coltrane!carpent
From: carpent@coltrane.SRC.Honeywell.COM (Todd Carpenter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Hard drive & chip contention
Message-ID: <18271@srcsip.UUCP>
Date: 7 Mar 89 20:07:58 GMT
References: <8903071906.AA01731@jade.berkeley.edu>
Sender: news@src.honeywell.COM
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In-reply-to: GIGUERE@WATCSG.BITNET's message of 7 Mar 89 19:07:19 GMT


"Bah!" I say.  I have a spanking new 2000, with a A2090a screaming happily
along, attached to a 206MB Rodime (experimental) 12msec, 12 MHz, SCSI hard
disk.  Yes, I'll admit that when I load in high res screens that life slows
down somewhat.

Big deal?  There are so many workarounds to this, including loading it to a
different screen, or having a lo-res screen in front, that complaining about it
is worthless.  Sure, it *would* be nice to see no slow down.  But the 2090a is
so incredibly fast the rest of the time, that it doesn't really matter.
Perhaps if you were doing animation, and had to constantly display high res AND
page/swap/load from disk, you may be annoyed.  Aside from that, I don't
understand the problem.

Besides, what else would you do?  I don't think you can use the bus by more
than one device at a time, and I don't think the memory is dual ported, nor are
there dual buses.  (Sarcasm?  No.)  So (correct me if I'm wrong), you really
can't get much better.  Something has to degrade somewhere.  I doubt the
problem is inherent to SCSI, as your dealer seems to claim.

The 2090a can support 7 SCSI, and 2 st506 drives.  I found it trivial to
install, and have had absolutely NO software problems.  Looking around, I found
the price ($330ish) competitive for the power I was getting.  Tell your dealer
he's full of hooey, and get the controller.