Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!UKANVAX"!MARKV From: MARKV@UKANVAX.BITNET (MARK GOODERUM - UNIV. OF KANSAS ACS - MARKV@UKANVAX) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.i-amiga Subject: RE: Starboard SCSI Module Message-ID: Date: 11 Jan 90 16:52:00 GMT Sender: Info-Amiga List Reply-To: Info-Amiga List Lines: 34 Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway X-VMS-To: IN%"I-AMIGA@UBVM.BITNET" You need the 25-50 pin cabling (the Starboard has a 'Mac SCSI' connector.) For the Mountlist, leave the first two cylinders unused (0 and 1) for the new driver (don't have it, just heard about it) which (I think) supports the 'hardblocks' standard. Second, 'physically' format the drive with a 1:1 interleave, and leave it up to DOS to take care of the interleave. (With the Interleave= entry in the Mountlist.) Depending on your system your want a 2:1 or 3:1 interleave. 2:1 performs better, but under worst case condidtions (or less than mostly ideal even) 3:1 is better. Right now my drives are 2:1, but I will probably to to 3:1 the next time I reformat. (If you have some kind of processor accelerator like the CMI or something else you have enough extra horse power to get away with 2:1.) On interleave I've figured this out (at least the StarDrive.) Using drive timings, I've figured out that when you do 'low-level' format, and give an interleave of other than 1 or 0 (1:1) the drive does the interleaveing completly transparent to DOS. So if you Interleave 2:1 on formatting, your and Tell DOS Interleave=0 (or 1) you get 2:1 Interleave. However, if you tell DOS Interleave=2, you actually get 4:1 interleave becuase DOS does 2:1 on top of the drives 2:1. This was determined expirmentally with careful timing and some help from DiskPerf. For other things, just follow the sample entries for the 2090 in the Enhancer manual, just use StarDrive.device for the Device=. FFS does work with the StarDrive just fine. Finally, its and extra command from Floppy, but DO SetPatch before ANYTHING else. I solved a lot of intermittant crashes by moving SetPatch back to the beginning of my floppy Startup. Good luck Mark