From: patrick@basil.u-net.com (Patrick James) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Power M-Disk Amiga A4000 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 21 Sep 1998 12:39:14 -0400 Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 326 Sender: barrett@relativity.cs.umass.edu Message-ID: <6u5vfi$786@relativity.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: patrick@basil.u-net.com (Patrick James) Keywords: hardware, floppy drive, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1998 Number 20 NNTP-Posting-Host: relativity.cs.umass.edu X-NNTP-Posting-Host: relativity.cs.umass.edu Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!not-for-mail PRODUCT NAME Power M-Disk Amiga A4000 BRIEF DESCRIPTION A half-speed 1.76 MB (high density) floppy drive for the A4000. The drive is a slim line device (1"), with a face plate, so can be used in both any Big Box Amiga or an Amiga 1200 Tower. An external version and a drive mechanism to be fitted into a desktop A1200 are also available. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: MicroniK Computer Service Address: Brückenstraße 2 D-51379 Leverkusen-Opladen Germany Telephone: +49 - (0) - 2171 - 7245 - 24 FAX: +49 - (0) - 2171 - 7245 - 90 E-mail: order or service@micronik.de World Wide Web: http://www.micronik.de/ LIST PRICE £54.95 (Pounds Sterling) All versions of the drive have the same price. DEMO VERSION None SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Any Amiga, with a 3.5" drive bay AmigaDOS 2.x or better is required for the use of high density floppy disks COPY PROTECTION None MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 2000, revision 6.2 Full ECS chipset 1 MB Chip RAM, 48 MB Fast RAM Ext. Power Computing XL Drive Phase5 Blizzard 2040/40 MHz VillageTronic Picasso IV 1.2, 4 MB GVP 4008 SCSI GVP IO Extender VillageTronic Ariadne Ethernet 1.2 Gigabyte Quantum Fireball Iomega Zip 100 Sony CDU-55S CDROM AmigaDOS 3.1 (Kickstart 40.63, Workbench 40.42) SetPatch 40.16 INSTALLATION The first part of the installation involves the removal of the floppy drive being replaced. This is heavily dependent on the Amiga model or tower case in use, so it would be impossible to describe fully. Once the drive has been physically mounted in a 3.5" bay, the power and data cables need to be correctly actached to the drive. In most cases, the cable connectors will have been manufactured so that they can only be connected one way. With that done, the drive should be usable immediately and no patch has to be installed. If the drive is being installed as DF1:, a jumper on the drive has to be correctly set, to distinguish between DS0 and DS1. A label on the drive explains this. Alternatively this may be determined by a twist in the floppy data cable. In an Amiga 2000, J301 has to be closed, before DF1: will be recognised. Although the drive was intended for use in the A4000, there is nothing to stop the drive being used in any other Big Box Amiga or tower. Full instructions for fitting drives in Amiga 2000, 3000 and 4000s can be found at: http://www.nationalamiga.com/technical/t-FloppyDrives.html If you want to access MSDOS disks you will have to mount PC0:, assuming the drive is DF0:. This involves double clicking on the DOSDriver for PC0: (Storage/DOSDrivers). A more practical solution is move the PC0 icon to Devs:DOSDrivers, allowing access everytime the Amiga is rebooted. REVIEW Although floppy drives have become less useful due to the popularity of removal media for backing up and CDROMs for software distribution, they are still required. The need for high density disks on the Amiga is not instantly obvious as only the A4000 has ever come with one fitted as standard, so no Amiga software has ever been distributed on high density disks. Backing up a hard disk to high density floppies is not much more practical than using double density floppies. The need for high density drives comes primarily from emulation, something which the Amiga is very good at. Macs and PCs have had, as standard, high density drives for sometime, so use of their software and the transfer of larger files, in the absence of a network, requires a high density drive. This is especially true when installing an operating system for use with an emulator. Normally, Amigas cannot support high density drives because PC drives run at the normal spindle speed of 300 rpm. Movement of data in high-density mode requires a 500 kilobaud data pump in the floppy path. The Amiga chips can only handle around 400 kilobauds. The Amiga runs its floppy data rate at the older double density standard of 250 kilobauds. The drives in the A4000 work round this by running at 150 rpm, consequently giving slower performance with high density disks. The MicroniK drive employs the same technique, which is fine for minimal usage for in double density mode, as the drive runs at approximately normal Amiga speed. If you want faster access, there have been other attempts to work round the problem with mixed success. The Power XL Drive uses a buffer to handle the data sent to the Amiga. This, as the DiskSpeed results below show, works reasonably well. The other solution is the untested Catweasel board, which basically acts as a replacement floppy controller. Here are some results given by DiskSpeed (disk/moni/DiskSpeed42.lha). DF3: is a regular 880 KB floppy drive for comparison, DF2: the XL drive and DF0: the MicroniK drive. All drives had 20 buffers. DF3: 880 KB FFS ; The control Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 1 files/sec File Open: 10 files/sec Directory Scan: 41 files/sec File Delete: 43 files/sec Seek/Read: 3 seeks/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 11647 bytes/sec Write to file: 6812 bytes/sec Read from file: 22755 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 11565 bytes/sec Write to file: 6812 bytes/sec Read from file: 22755 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 8359 bytes/sec Write to file: 953 bytes/sec Read from file: 18703 bytes/sec -- DF2: Power XL Drive 1760 KB FFS Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 1 files/sec File Open: 8 files/sec Directory Scan: 40 files/sec File Delete: 40 files/sec Seek/Read: 2 seeks/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 11565 bytes/sec Write to file: 3051 bytes/sec Read from file: 23461 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 11538 bytes/sec Write to file: 3062 bytes/sec Read from file: 23294 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 7783 bytes/sec Write to file: 744 bytes/sec Read from file: 18204 bytes/sec -- DF0: MicroniK Power M-disk 1760 KB FFS Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: < 1 files/sec File Open: 5 files/sec Directory Scan: 41 files/sec File Delete: 41 files/sec Seek/Read: 1 seeks/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 6898 bytes/sec Write to file: 2000 bytes/sec Read from file: 22190 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 6898 bytes/sec Write to file: 2000 bytes/sec Read from file: 22341 bytes/sec Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 5234 bytes/sec Write to file: 510 bytes/sec Read from file: 15312 bytes/sec These results, as known, show the XL drive to perform slightly under the normal drive and the MicroniK drive to performe slower still. DOCUMENTATION There was no documentation, other than a sticker on the drive, which explains the jumper settings of the drive itself (DF0: or DF1:). If you are not confident fitting an internal drive, without instructions, go for the external version. No manual is really necessary as the floppy and power cables will only fit in one way and no software patch is required. The question of instructions was asked to Blittersoft giving the following response: "> 2. Is any documentation meant to be included with the Micronik > HD floppy drive for the A4000? No, it simply plugs in. Jumpers set DF0 or DF1 (internal)." LIKES The drive does not require a patch to be used, unlike the Power XL Drive. The drive was to easy to install and provides access to Amiga, MSDOS and Macintosh high density disks, through CrossDOS and CrossMAC or ShapeShifter. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS A manual, including details of the Amiga motherboards' own jumper settings concerning floppy drives, is definitely required. The mechanism costs considerably more than a standard full speed high density floppy drive available for PCs. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS The drive performs exactly the same as the half speed drive found in all A4000s (except Amiga Technologies' Towers) and some A3000s. Power Computing's XL uses a buffer and patch to attempt to run nearer full speed. This makes installation more complicated. That drive also costs more. The reviewer and others have encountered problems with that drive and Shapeshifter, which does not like the drive's buffer. Meanwhile, others have reported no such problems with that drive. Another option which gives access to cheaper, full speed high density floppy drives, among other interfaces is the Catweasel board for the A1200/A4000. The cost of a Catweasel and a full speed drive is not much more than the MicroniK mechanism. The board is also available as a Zorro II card, called Buddha, featuring several IDE interfaces. The Catweasel cannot be used to add a floppy drive to an Amiga 500. BUGS None found or suspected VENDOR SUPPORT The reviewer is not associated with MicroniK or Blittersoft, a UK distributer in any way. An e-mail sent to Blittersoft, for the purpose of obtaining information for this review, was answered very promptly. Both have support by e-mail and their WWW sites. WARRANTY Unknown, presumably 12 months like other products sold, in the UK, by Blittersoft. CONCLUSIONS This drive does exactly that which it is intended to. It is noticeably slower when using high density disks. This however is a limitation of the Amiga's hardware. This product receives 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 because of the absence of installation instructions. All Amigas should have a high density drive. Hopefully, new Amigas will have the facility for using cheap, full speed high density drives. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1998 Patrick James, referred to as "the reviewer", but may be freely distributed, beyond the normal distribution of c.s.a.reviews. --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews Web site: http://math.uh.edu/~barrett/reviews.html