Gold Fish 3/goldfish_volume_3.bin/files/reviews/hardware/storage/samsungshd-3212a

Internet Message Format | 1994-09-29 | 9.2 KB

Path: news.uh.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Exjobb - J|rgen Grahn)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Samsung SHD-3212A IDE hard disk
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 29 Sep 1994 14:09:45 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
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Reply-To: [e-mail] (Exjobb - J|rgen Grahn)
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Keywords: hardware, IDE, hard drive, commercial
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    Samsung SHD-3212A hard disk


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    A 420 MB 3.5" IDE hard disk suitable for the Amiga 4000.


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        Samsung


LIST PRICE

    I paid 2500 SEK for it, including taxes. Due to quickly varying
hardware prices, the rapid fluctuations of the Swedish crown, and dealer's
campaign prices, this is a meaningless number.  It was the cheapest drive I
could find in Gothenburg though, without resorting to mail order (as I've
worked in a post office, I know what happens to things sent by mail. :-))


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        An Amiga (or any computer) with an IDE interface and space
        for a 3.5" wide and 1" high hard disk.  This includes the
        A4000, but not the A1200, at least not without additional
        hardware.

    SOFTWARE

        None


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 4000/030 with 2 MB Chip RAM and 4 MB Fast RAM.
    The standard internal Seagate ST3096AT 80 MB IDE hard disk
    (divided into three partitions).

    AmigaDOS 3.0
    Various commodities and patches installed.


DISCLAIMER

    I'm no hardware wizard.  Some of the advice I give may be terribly
wrong (but if it is, I wonder why it worked for me?).


INTRODUCTION

    When you buy an A4000 or an A4000/030, it is equipped with one
internal hard disk, talking to the computer through the IDE protocol.  While
the much cooler SCSI protocol permits six devices on one control card, IDE
permits a maximum of two; one 'slave' and one 'master'.  The hard disk of
the A4000 occupies one of the two places; thus, there's one left.  There's
internally room for one more IDE hard disk, provided it is 3.5" wide and no
more that 1" high.  Basically, all you have to do is open your Amiga and
plug it in.

    3.5" x 1" IDE disks are the most common on the PC-clone market right
now.  They are cheap; in fact, the manufacturers claim they don't make much
money on them.

    As you may know, large hard disks tend to get filled quickly.  It's
some kind of natural law.  Maybe it has something to do with thermodynamics,
I don't know.  The 80MB drive I got with my A4000/030 back in 1992 was now
(September, 1994) full with software and files of different kinds, even
though I archived all downloaded software on floppies rather than on my hard
disk.  I decided it was upgrade time again.  I spent one whole day running
around in computer shops (even PC-clone shops of the type where the staff
all wear ties and everything is all white and clean and plastic and they
have a pyramid of Micro$oft software on the floor) looking for cheap
drives.  I decided I should go for something around 400MB; the price
difference was too small compared to smaller drives.  I found the cheapest
drive at one of this town's three Amiga dealers.


INSTALLATION

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  If you are not comfortable opening up your
    Amiga, then you should have the work done by an authorized Amiga
    service center.  Opening your Amiga yourself may void your warranty,
    and careless work may even damage the machine.  - Dan]

    One of the problems with buying hard disks for the A4000 is that you
void your warranty if you install it yourself (that is, if you still have a
warranty with C= gone and all).  I decided I had nothing to lose, so I
opened my computer a week ago to have a look at the placement of the hard
disks bay.  Boy, was it dirty in there!  There was a thick layer of dust on
all the chips and wires.  I removed it.

    An IDE hard disk consists of a plate with a lot of chips and
electronical components on one side, and the actual disk in a black case with
the disk and motor on the other side.  There's also a data connector and a
power connector.  Depending on whether you want the drive to be the single,
first or second unit, you set a few jumpers on the plate.

    When I installed the Samsung, I largely followed the instructions
given in the A4000 user's guide.  I opened up the computer, made sure there
was no static electricity by touching grounded objects, wrote down how
things were connected in the computer, removed the data bus to the internal
floppy (it was in the way), removed power and data to the Seagate, and
lifted up the drive bay with the Seagate.

    Problem one:  I had no information on what jumpers to set on the
Seagate.  I phoned the dealer who gave me full information on that.  Problem
two:  the Seagate needed three jumpers set to be the 'master' unit, but there
were only two jumper caps on the card.  I had to make it drive two, since
'slave' mode needed only one.  This proved to be no problem:  all my
partitions still worked after the change.  I made the Samsung the master,
and assembled the computer again.  Using HDToolbox following the manual was
no problem.  HDToolbox could make 405MB out of the '420MB' drive; that is
probably quite normal.  I made one 120MB partition and saved the rest for
future use. :-)

    Then came the horror.  I noticed my DF0: couldn't read HD disks any
longer.  There were three possibilities:  a broken chip on the motherboard, a
broken chip on the Chinon floppy drive, or some kind of bad connection.  The
floppy data bus pressed rather hard against the top of the new Samsung drive
(it has to pass the two hard disks on its way down to a connector on the
motherboard at the bottom of the Amiga).  I removed the Samsung and it was
worse - the internal drive didn't function at all!  I put back the Samsung
and started to mourn.  I started wondering about prices on Chinon drives and
the availability of Paula chips now with C= gone.  I phoned my dealer and
they suggested that I had connected the data bus upside-down.  I knew I
hadn't, but I opened the Amiga and messed around with the connectors a bit -
and everything worked.  It has worked for two weeks now. The problem must
have been my not connecting the DF0: data bus firmly enough.

    I promised myself and my brother a big bottle of "The Famous Grouse"
scotch whiskey if it worked, so I bought it today. :-)


USE

    If a hard disk works correctly, the only things about it that you can
observe are its speed and sound.  It is speedy; about 40% faster than the
original Seagate according to the (probably bogus) tests of Sysinfo 3.23.
On my system, the Seagate partitions are about 1.06 MB/sec, and the Samsung
1.47 MB/sec.  I was told the Samsung had a 128Kb cache; that may be the reason
for the good figures.

    As usual, speed test figures around +40% mean, in reality, probably
no visible speed gain at all.

    The disk sounds rather ugly; it's a sharp crunching sound, like
breaking glass, louder than the Seagate.  I guess you get used to it when
you know it isn't the disk falling apart.


DOCUMENTATION

    None, except for a sticker explaining how to set the jumpers.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

    Well, I liked the price, and I disliked the bug....


COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

    There isn't much to compare.  If a hard disk works correctly (see
BUGS) all that counts is the money/megabyte ratio and (possibly) the speed.


BUGS

    This disk has the well-known "spin-up" problem:  the first time you
turn the power on your Amiga, it doesn't know the Samsung is there, because
it starts too slowly.  You have to reboot to make it appear.  I thought this
appeared only on large and slow Seagate IDE drives, and I don't like this at
all.

    It isn't a BIG problem for me; I use the Seagate for booting, so I
just inserted a command in the startup-sequence to reboot if HD3: was
missing.

    For people with the 3.1 ROMs, this _may_ not be a problem; I've heard
that 3.1 waits much longer than earlier Kickstarts for the hard disks to
start working.


BUGS THAT WEREN'T THERE

    It seems you don't have to change the MaxTransfer value in
HDToolbox, like with too many other drives.  At least my dealer told me not
to change it, and I've had no problems yet.

    Also, I've yet to see situations where the Seagate and the Samsung
are incompatible.  Those problems are said to occur with other combinations.


WARRANTY

    I got a one-year warranty of some kind from the dealer.


CONCLUSIONS

    This is a cheap and fast IDE hard disk which will most likely solve
your space problems, but beware:  it has the spin-up problem.  Anyone could
install it, but I recommend that you let a professional do it if you live
close enough to bring the Amiga to him/her.


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    Copyright 1994 Jorgen Grahn.  Spread this file, quote it, include it
in other documents, but don't change it without marking the changes.

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
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