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motrucker
Amiga Junkie
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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 Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:52 pm Post subject: 2000 SCSI stuff |
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I just landed a couple of Zorro II SCSI cards. One is an A2091 with 1Mb of RAM, version 7.0 ROMs and (drumroll please) a revision 08 SCSI chip.
The other card is a GVP A4000 HC+8 with 4Mb installed.
So, now My 2000HD will be fixed up - to original specs no less (almost) - the only difference will be a 100Mb hard drive, instead of the 42Mb.
This 2000HD is one of a few I have seen that came through with 1Mb of chip RAM. It is in great condition. |
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Rekrul
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Joined: 27 Dec 2007
Posts: 164
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| Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2012 6:50 am Post subject: Re: 2000 SCSI stuff |
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| motrucker wrote: | I just landed a couple of Zorro II SCSI cards. One is an A2091 with 1Mb of RAM, version 7.0 ROMs and (drumroll please) a revision 08 SCSI chip.
The other card is a GVP A4000 HC+8 with 4Mb installed. |
Definitely go with the GVP board. Not does it have more memory, but in my experience, GVP controllers were miles ahead of the A2091 board. |
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motrucker
Amiga Junkie
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Fri Jul 06, 2012 10:41 pm Post subject: Re: 2000 SCSI stuff |
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| Rekrul wrote: | | motrucker wrote: | I just landed a couple of Zorro II SCSI cards. One is an A2091 with 1Mb of RAM, version 7.0 ROMs and (drumroll please) a revision 08 SCSI chip.
The other card is a GVP A4000 HC+8 with 4Mb installed. |
Definitely go with the GVP board. Not does it have more memory, but in my experience, GVP controllers were miles ahead of the A2091 board. |
I put the 2091 in because this is a box stock 2000HD in pretty much original condition. The 2091 card has the version 7 ROMs, and the 08 revision of the WD SCSI chip.
After much digging, I found that some of the later 2000HDs came with 2091 rather than the 2090 thing. Also found a 110 Mb Quantum hard drive for it.
This setup is working quite well.
I'll save the GVP for my 3.1 OSed 2000.... |
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Rekrul
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| Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 4:19 am Post subject: Re: 2000 SCSI stuff |
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| motrucker wrote: | I put the 2091 in because this is a box stock 2000HD in pretty much original condition. The 2091 card has the version 7 ROMs, and the 08 revision of the WD SCSI chip.
After much digging, I found that some of the later 2000HDs came with 2091 rather than the 2090 thing. Also found a 110 Mb Quantum hard drive for it.
This setup is working quite well.
I'll save the GVP for my 3.1 OSed 2000.... |
I had the GVP HD controller for my A500 and it was great. I plugged my Zip drive into it and could use it like a big floppy drive. The controller sensed disk changes automatically and I never had a problem formatting new disks.
Then I moved to an A2000 with a 2091 card in it. Not only would it not sense disk changes, it wouldn't even mount a disk unless it was in the drive when I booted and then it was impossible to swap disks and get it to recognize a different one.
The first time I tried to format a disk it was about 2 hours of frustration. I've forgotten the details now, but as I recall, it wouldn't mount the disk unless it was formatted, but you couldn't format it unless it was mounted.
A friend finally told me about a program called SCSIMounter, which will let you mount/unmount different devices. Without that I wouldn't have been able to use my Zip drive.
Also, I believe that the GVP had an adjustable delay for drives that need longer to spin up, while the 2091 only has a default delay of about 30 seconds. Which gets kind of annoying when one of your drives just needs an extra five seconds or so. I eventually turned the delay off and would just manually reboot after the drive spun up. It was faster that way. |
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motrucker
Amiga Junkie
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 10:21 am Post subject: |
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You must have had early ROMs and/or the revision 04 chip. I don't like zip drive at all, but I do use SyQuest with this setup with no problems at all.
Like I said though, this setup is for the 2000HD to try to keep it as original as possible.
I use a newer 2000 with a GVP '030, FF/sd, etc., etc., as my main machine. The GVP A4000 series II is in this unit too. I will not argue that the GVP is a better card - it is.... |
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Rekrul
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| Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 6:02 pm Post subject: |
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| motrucker wrote: | | You must have had early ROMs and/or the revision 04 chip. |
To be honest, I have no idea what revision it is. I got the system from a friend with the card already installed.
| motrucker wrote: | | I don't like zip drive at all, but I do use SyQuest with this setup with no problems at all. |
At the time, the Zip drive seemed like the most economical storage solution and I bought one fairly early so the problems hadn't yet become widely known. Mine developed the clicking problem, but never ruined any disks. I did have two different power supplies just die on me though. One was apparently killed simply by unplugging it for a few minutes (to move some stuff) and then plugging it back in. Iomega did send me a new one free of charge. I think I bought the third one myself. |
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motrucker
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Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2012 8:32 pm Post subject: |
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The 2091 is like many SCSI cards, in that it must have the latest version chips to work well. Even with that, it isn't the best choice around for many setups.
I don't like Iomega at all. They bought out SyQuest and then killed off all of the drive technology. The SyQuest drives were really reliable. Right now all I have is a SyQuest 135 SCSI external drive. Old as it is, it still works fine.
Of course these days using a CD or DVD drive is far more reliable, and much cheaper! |
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Rekrul
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| Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2012 5:41 am Post subject: |
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| motrucker wrote: | | The 2091 is like many SCSI cards, in that it must have the latest version chips to work well. Even with that, it isn't the best choice around for many setups. |
I'm kind of biased against Commodore expansion products. Every product for the A500 that allowed for RAM expansion was limited to around 2MB, even though the A500 was fully capable of using 8MB, just like the other systems. My A2000 has a Commodore brand 68020 accelerator in it. Because of this, many games won't run. Where other companies gave you a switch or at least a jumper (to which you could wire a switch) to disable the card, the A2620 can only be turned off through the boot options. You hold some combination of the mouse buttons while booting in order to turn it off and then that change only stays in effect until you reboot again. This makes it impossible to boot in PAL mode (I'm in the US), since holding down the mouse buttons is how you disable Degrader. Not to mention that the Kickstart switcher also uses the mouse buttons at bootup and only stays in effect until you reboot.
Decent system for simulations, terrible system for playing action games in PAL. |
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motrucker
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Age: 66
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Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:56 am Post subject: |
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I owned an A500 many moons ago. I had a Mega Midget (?) '030 accelerator with 8Mb of RAM, with a GVP A500+ hard drive. I much prefer the A2000.
I do play the occasional game, but I do a lot of graphics work, and DTP with the Amiga (still).
I am spoiled I guess, I have an old A1000 to play the older games on. No hard drive on it (yet) but a total of 2.5Mb of RAM so it will play just about any game I throw at it.
I tend to agree with you about Commodore expansion solutions. But the GVP accelerators have a "problem" too, in that they use very expensive, and hard to get SIMMs.
I just found a SCSI CD-ROM reader for my 3.1 A2000 - so it is getting close to where I want it. Just need a graphics card or a FF/SD. |
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Rekrul
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| Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 4:47 am Post subject: |
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| motrucker wrote: | | I owned an A500 many moons ago. I had a Mega Midget (?) '030 accelerator with 8Mb of RAM, with a GVP A500+ hard drive. I much prefer the A2000. |
When it was working properly, I had a GVP 100MB drive, Supra Turbo 28 accelerator and a Supra 8MB RAM expansion. While not exactly an 030, the Turbo 28 gave a nice speed boost and since it was still a 68000 chip, it seemed 100% compatible. At least I don't recall ever having to turn it off for any games. On the down side, programs written for 020 and above wouldn't run on it.
Then I started to have problems with the RAM expander. Having all three devices plugged into the side put stress on the connectors due to the plates that were meant to slide under the Amiga for support, but which didn't slide under the previous device in the chain like they were supposed to. It got to the point where I couldn't get the RAM expander to work at all and my efforts to re-solder the problem connections didn't go very well.
| motrucker wrote: | | I tend to agree with you about Commodore expansion solutions. But the GVP accelerators have a "problem" too, in that they use very expensive, and hard to get SIMMs. |
Yes, that's true of the hard drive for the A500 as well. To match the case of the A500, they only put four SIMM sockets in it. The details are hazy now, but I believe you were only allowed to use four 1MB SIMMs, or two 4MB SIMMS. I had planned to buy 2MB ones as finances permitted and add them in, but I remember there was some reason I couldn't do that. Or maybe you had to add all four at once. |
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motrucker
Amiga Junkie
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 12:37 pm Post subject: |
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The GVP A500+ Series II drive/RAM expansion boxes would only allow 1Mb or 4Mb SIMMs. As I remember it would allow 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb, and 8Mb expansion only (What the jumpers could be set for). All things considered I think GVP did a good job of designing and marketing most of their hardware.
Some of it was sure expensive though - I remember paying about $700.00 for the GVP A500+ with RAM and a 110Mb Quantum hard drive brand new.
I have to chuckle when people gripe about paying $200.00 for one today used. |
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Rekrul
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| Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2012 2:47 pm Post subject: |
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| motrucker wrote: | | The GVP A500+ Series II drive/RAM expansion boxes would only allow 1Mb or 4Mb SIMMs. As I remember it would allow 1Mb, 2Mb, 4Mb, and 8Mb expansion only (What the jumpers could be set for). All things considered I think GVP did a good job of designing and marketing most of their hardware. |
I agree. Although I would have gladly sacrificed the matching case design for one that that had eight SIMM sockets, allowing you to add 1MB SIMMs up to a total of eight. If I recall correctly, I think that when I priced them, the 4MB SIMMS were going for about $200 each. To add 8MB would have cost almost as much as the drive/controller cost. (I think it was about $500) |
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motrucker
Amiga Junkie
Joined: 16 Nov 2007
Age: 66
Posts: 328
Location: Maryland, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2012 3:15 am Post subject: |
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| RAM prices were nuts back then. On the GVP A4000 SCSI card I just got, there is one SIMM (these are 30 pin, 1 Mb SIMMs) with an old price tag that says $110.68! Ouch! |
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