Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!oxygen!acadch!impch!accsys!sosaria!wizard
From: wizard@sosaria.UUCP (Chris Brand)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: RE: GVP
Message-ID: <0417.AA0417@sosaria>
Date: 13 Aug 89 23:11:35 GMT
Reply-To: wizard@sosaria.ccs.imp.com
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga
Lines: 59


In message <62835@linus.UUCP> Rich Champeaux wrote:

>good things about it, and since they were advertising it with the Quantum as
>being fast,  I figured what the hell, it's got to at least be faster than my
>Supra I have on my 1000.  Wrong!!!  The drive I was using with the GVP is a
>ST296N 80Meg 28ms.  The Supra was using a Miniscribe 8425S 20Meg 65ms.
>The Supra was giving me ~140k reads and writes, but the GVP gave me only
>123k reads and 95k writes, and it had a drive that was twice as fast.  Now,
>Amiga World and other people were reporting speeds around 240k, but I couldn't

Voil`! This is what I meant. See, if a controller is so famed for speed,
it should really give you more than just 123K reads, and if a controller
comes to only 240 K with a Quantum drive, it's NOTHING. 
Now, before you write more ugly flames concerning this matter, I'd like
you to know that I have no intention to make GVP look bad. I'm
very impressed by what the company is doing for the Amiga, and I certainly
wished there were more like GVP. I'm also NOT payed by Commodore (:-) for 
supporting the 2090A. But I'm in with computers for more than seven years
now, and even if this is not a lot I went through much. The final
experience I made concerning upgrading hardware is that the best you can
do is to buy all hardware from the same developer.
One example is the GVP Hardcard, which was heavily recommended and now
it turns out that there are problems with certain software and hardware
that will not work properly. With the 2090A, I haven't discovered ANYTHING
until now that gave problems, and I use a lot of software (no, NOT black
copies).
Or hear this one: We planned to buy the Sharp Color Scanner with the
ASDG Scanlab ever sine we saw it at the CeBit in Germany. Now that it 
is finally available, we were horrified to hear from one of the
biggest swiss Amiga dealers that it worked ONLY with Amigas equipped with
the A2620. No one seems to know why. Unfortunately, we have a 
Hurricane Board and now we have to try to sell it and buy a 2620, since
we need the scanner now and not in half a year, when the problem is
solved. (By the way, does anybody know more about this? How about
you, Mr. Kivolowitz?)
What I want to say is that if you buy only Commodore stuff, you're
quite safe against unpleasant surprises. I said QUITE safe, not
COMPLETELY.
The problems start with 3rd party products. Unfortunately, many people
are far from keeping to the recommendations Commodore gives out concerning
development of hard- and software. So it is quite clear that sooner or
later, you'll get problem if you combine products from differents
developers.

>I decided to chalk it up to experience, went with my first instinct and bought
>a HardFrame.  With the same ST296N, I'm now getting 655k reads and 290k writes.
>The HardFrame is even cheaper.

Yeah. That's what I call speed. Now imagine what he would get if he
connected a 11ms Quantum drive to that HardFrame.....


--
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Chris Brand - wizard@sosaria.ccs.imp.com
"Justice is the possession and doing 
of what one is entitled to"  -  Platon
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