Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!sdsu!uzun
From: uzun@sdsu.UUCP (william uzun)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Amiga 2000 HD Situation
Keywords: hard disks spam
Message-ID: <2855@sdsu.UUCP>
Date: 10 Dec 87 06:43:53 GMT
Organization: San Diego State University, Math/Sciences Dept.
Lines: 25


         
Well I was going to wait for the SDPI from ASDG but since this will
not be around until mid 88 I have decided to plunge into a hard disk
now.  I went to the local computer outlet and tried the CA 2090 with
a Miniscribe and was not all that pleased with the performance.  I began
looking through the computer shopper for faster hard disks but knew that
the real problem was the File system and OS.  Well I saw an Ad in another
magazine for a hard disk from Supra Corp and gave them a call and was
pleasently surprised.  It seems that in early january they will be shipping
a 30M drive with controller which Abels will sell for $675.00.  It has
a 65 msec access time (pretty slow) but the controller is what got to me!
It formats the disk with a 1:1 sector interleave (versus about 3:1 with current
software and 2090) which means the files are stored as phyically contiguous
sectors for increased speed, It buffers full tracks (a great trick since it
is often just as fast to read a track as it is a single sector) and stores
data in RLL format (for about 3Xs the data per sector almost tripling the
effective Xfer rate).  The tech I talked too said they intend to support
auto boot as well!  Now I am in no way connected with Supra Corp. and have
never even heard of them before, does anyone know of this Company?  I have
placed an advance order with Abels and will keep you all posted if I
ever get a chance to use this hardware in the next few weeks.  Anyone
hear of anything better which will be available in the near future?

-Roger