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MicroForgeReview
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1986-04-02
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Path: uwvax!harvard!think!mit-eddie!genrad!decvax!decwrl!glacier!oliveb!3comvax!mykes
From: uwvax!3comvax!mykes (Mike Schwartz)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: save your money
Date: 8 Jan 86 17:58:11 GMT
Organization: 3Com Corp; Mountain View, CA
Micro Forge is located in Winston Ga, and their phone number is 404-949-5698.
I spoke with David Matthews there. I plan to wait for his 40MB disks and will
get the 1 slot expander and power supply (required for hard disk). His
complete expansion system makes the Amiga into an awesome machine:
80MB hard disk, 8.5 MB Ram, etc. (it all fits in his 5 slot expander).
Someone sent me mail, saying what I wrote here is correct (prices), but that
Tecmar's products are available now. Are they?
In article <325@3comvax.UUCP> mykes@3comvax.UUCP (Mike Schwartz) writes:
>In previous articles, some people may have thought my raving about the
>Tecmar prices was crazy, but....
>
>I spoke to David Matthews at MicroForge in Winston GA by phone this
>morning. You will be seeing ads for MicroForge in the next AmigaWorld
>Magazine. Anyway, here is the scoop:
>
>MicroForge is going to be releasing (or already is ready to take orders
>for) the following:
>
>Developer Non-Developer Item
>$500 $716 5 slot expansion board with case and power supply
>$70 $100 Same as above, but 1 slot
>$1000 $1400 1st 10MB Hard disk system
>$1050 $1500 1st 20MB Hard disk system
>$1275 $1800 1st 40MB Hard disk system
>$947 ??? 2nd 40MB hard disk system
>$280 $400 Stereo Sound Digitizer w/software
>$25 $18 RamDisk software that works with workbench.
>$70 $50 Full function editor with full macro capabilities
>$700 $1000 2MB Ram expansion board
>
>These prices are much better than Tecmar's, so you CAN REALLY SAVE
>MONEY. Just to refresh your memories, Tecmar wants $1000 for 1MB of
>RAM, and $2500 for a 20MB hard disk (plus 1MB of RAM). Tecmar does
>give you some real useful other features with their RAM board, though,
>like another serial and parallel port, battery backed up clock, and
>the SASI controller required for the disk. I realize you folks can add,
>but I will add it up for you anyway.
>
>For $2500, you can get 1MB of RAM and 20MB of hard disk from Tecmar. For
>developers, $2500 will buy the 5-slot bus extension, power supply, 2MB of
>RAM, and a 40MB hard disk. My opinion that the best route to go is to
>buy the 1 slot adapter ($70), power supply ($150), and 40MB hard disk
>($1275) for a reasonable $1500 (approx.) price tag.
>
>David Matthews is very enthusiastic about the Amiga, and is a good person
>to talk with. MicroForge makes products for the Macintosh, so they
>apparently know a little about making peripherals for 68K machines.
>I have no experience with their products, but I am very impressed
>with Mr. Matthews, and he seemed to be quite knowledgeable about
>the Amiga internals required to make these products. IN MY OPINION,
>he is really doing the universe a favor by not taking advantage of
>a lack of competition for hardware products in the Amiga marketplace,
>and he will get my business. I hope he gets yours, too.
>
>AVAILABILITY:
>MicroForge will be ready to take VISA orders in about a week (1/10/86),
>but not all of the above mentioned products are ready. As of this
>posting, the 5-slot expander will not be ready until mid-to-end of
>February (they have had to juggle their designs because the conventions
>for putting things on the Amiga bus is not quite finalized). The 2MB
>RAM expansion will be available around the same time. He also has no
>40MB disks in stock, but he has been told he will get them before next
>week. Everything else is available NOW!!!
>
>PS:
> Has anyone ever seen a Tecmar product (that works) for the
>Amiga that is available? (I am just curious)
>
Path: uwmcsd1!uwmacc!uwvax!seismo!hao!hplabs!pesnta!pyramid!amiga!stan
From: stan@amiga.UUCP (Stanley Shepard)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Micro Forge Hard Disk reviewed (long)
Date: 25 Mar 86 00:21:29 GMT
Organization: Commodore-Amiga Inc., 983 University Ave #D, Los Gatos CA 95030
I just received the Micro-Forge hard disk drive, and the following are
my comments/observations.
The system arrived as four distinct parts:
(1) The hard disk drive box.
(2) The Amiga interface box.
(3) The power supply box.
(4) Floppy disk and instructions
(1) The power supply box is big and bulky, and the cables seem short. A
power switch on the side should always be left in the off position.
It seems the power supply is switched on and off from the Amiga power
switch by sensing voltage at the Amiga interface box.
(2) The Amiga interface box, connects to the side connector of the Amiga and
has a ribbon cable to the hard disk box. Inside the box are two small
PC boards that plugged into each other. The Amiga side connector is not
extended. The plastic box that surrounds this is a snap together type.
My box was missing a hole for the power cable (I easily drilled one), and
half the box never fit well (I still only use half).
(3) The hard disk box (which I presume also houses the controller) is metal.
It looks nice (my opinion) with the only draw back being 4 protruding
screws (heads only) (two on each side).
(4) The system also came with a floppy disk for installing the drivers etc.
into the system, and a users manual (about 7 pages very simple).
After following the instructions and hooking up the disk I powered it up.
My Amiga powered itself on, even though the switch was off. After finding
out, by guessing, that the power switch on the power supply should be left
off, I powered up my Amiga; kickstarted it; and inserted the disk that came
with the Micro-Forge system. I followed the instructions on formatting the
disk and the "installed" the hard disk. I copied a few things over to the
hard disk, changed the startup file as suggested by the instructions and
re-booted. By George, it came up and worked!! I copied much more over to
the hard disk, and then decided to run a few tests.
First I tried opening a window containing about 20 icons. I was impressed.
Although it seemed to take about 10 seconds, it also seemed very fast. No
longer was floppy disk going err-err-err-err as the icons appeared, just
a few flashes of the hard disk light and the window is done.
I next tried compiling mandelbrot, since I already had figures for various
times spent compiling that. The following are those results:
AMIGA COMPILATION TIMES
(all times in minutes:seconds)
-------------Amiga------------
Vanilla Smarter Smart With HD
Program 512k 512k 1024k Micro-F
mand.c 10:31 3:45 2:32 2:35
mand1.c 9:09 3:02 1:52 1:54
mand2.c 2:36 2:09 1:00 1:05
mand3.c 9:11 3:22 2:04 2:11
mand4.c 5:34 2:34 1:21 1:24
link 3:30 3:30 1:50 1:58
----- ----- ----- -----
40:31 18:22 10:39 11:07
Definition of environments:
===========================
Vanilla 512k:
This is the recommended environment using the supplied command
(execute) files. It is very simple to understand, requires
the minimum amount of RAM and is very slow.
Smarter 512k:
This environment is VERY similar to the vanilla environment.
The performance improvement is based on moving source and
object files, temporarily, to RAM disk. Note that even
though this involves 2 extra copies and 2 extra deletes it
still takes less than 1/2 the time. This does reduce the
amount of memory available to compile in and therefore may
not be able to compile some very large programs.
The link portion was not changed.
The differences are:
copy <file>.c to RAM:
compile RAM:<file> (instead of compiling <file>)
copy RAM:<file>.o to DF1: (save the output file)
delete RAM:<file>.c RAM:<file>.o
Smart 1024k:
Run everything out of RAM: Note that this requires some setup
time as the world must be copied into RAM: prior to starting the
compiles.
With HD Micro-Forge:
Same commands given as with Smarter Amiga. Speeds approximate
those of "Smart (1024k) Amiga. Set up time (takes longer to boot)
aprox 20 sec.
As can be seen, the improvement is quite substantial. Overall, I am very
pleased with the product. The few drawbacks (lack of technical documentation,
and unintegrated appraoch of expansion) are easily overlooked when a product
performs as well and reliably as this one has. I hope that other vendors
do as well on Amiga add-on products as Micro Forge has.
The following is address and telephone information for Micro-Forge.
Micro Forge
4771 Cool Springs Rd.
Winston, Ga 30187
(404) 949-5698
Disclaimer: These may or may not be the opinions of my employer.