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- Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
- Path: sparky!uunet!math.fu-berlin.de!informatik.tu-muenchen.de!hphalle6!behrenss
- From: behrenss@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Soenke Behrens)
- Subject: IDE Card Ref (repost as per request)
- Sender: news@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (USENET Newssystem)
- Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 16:03:01 GMT
- Message-ID: <behrenss.713894581@hphalle6>
- Lines: 237
-
- I apologize to the world at large for reposting this, but some ppl
- seem to have been unhappy with the formatting and length. Well,
- no problem, here we go again :)
-
- ===================
-
- !--------------------------------------------------------------------
- This is a short(?) description of the Turbo IDE Card as it recently
- was published on a flyer at KansasFest 1992. Some additional infor-
- mation included.
-
- Copyright 1992 Joachim Lange
-
- Feel free to distribute this text as you like as long as it remains
- unchanged.
-
- Questions, comments and suggestions welcome. Send to:
- behrenss@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Soenke Behrens)
-
- Replies will be sent out in september.
-
- SHH SYSTEME
- Dipl. Ing. Joachim Lange
- Schoenstrasse 80a
- 8000 Muenchen 90
- Germany
-
- Phone: (intnl. area code) + 49 + 89 + 6515150
- ^ ^ ^
- ! ! !
- Germany ! !
- ! !
- Muenchen !
- !
- SHH Systeme, Joachim Lange
-
- !****************************************************************!
- ! "We make IDE Hard Drives RAMFast !!" !
- ! "We make Vulcan Hard Drives RAMFast !!" !
- !****************************************************************!
-
- End of header
- !--------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- ///Turbo IDE Card Features
- ==========================
-
- - The Turbo IDE Card is a High-Speed DMA Hard Disk Controller for
- the Apple IIGS and Apple IIe.
-
- - Allows the use of the inexpensive and popular IDE hard drives with
- Apple II computers.
-
- - Fully PRODOS and GS/OS compatible.
-
- - Uses High-Speed DMA in Apple IIGS and Apple IIe.
-
- - Offers highest data transfer rate: as low as 0.8 msec/Block for
- linear read (using ProSel-16, Statistics on Disc Access). Many
- large-capacity drives offer even higher speed.
-
- - Speed test: A real-world GS/OS-verify delivers more than 600
- KByte/s.
-
- - Up to 300 KByte/s data transfer rate under PRODOS 8.
-
- - Boots a minimum GS/OS System in nine seconds, with accelerator in
- six seconds.
-
- - Boots PRODOS 8 in less than one second.
-
- - Wastes no time for self-initialisation compared to standard SCSI
- interfaces! Gives a very short warm-up time.
-
- - High-speed GS/OS driver with GS/OS-caching support included (Note:
- RAMFast SCSI controllers do not support GS/OS caching).
-
- - Fully compatible with all DMA-capable hardware such as: ZIP GSX,
- Transwarp GS, PC Transporter, RAM Cards from Apple, Applied Engi-
- neering, CV-Tech, Harris, Q-Labs etc.
-
- - Supports two drives up to 256 MBytes capacity each.
-
- - Up to eight partitions on one drive, 16 partitions on two drives,
- 32 MBytes per partition (up to 256 MBytes if used with Macintosh
- HFS FSTs).
-
- - Can boot from any partition.
-
- - The DMA feature can be disabled by software to be compatible with
- non-DMA-capable hardware as the ZIP Chip, the original Transwarp
- and some IIGS memory expansion cards.
-
- - The Turbo IDE Card supports 8 (eight) MBytes of RAM expansion on
- the IIGS.
-
- - Under PRODOS 8, the upper partitions (3...8) can be mapped into
- other slots.
-
- - Semi-automatic installation procedure with auto-recognition of the
- hard drive's geometry and with auto-partitioning.
-
- - All types of IDE hard disk drives can be used. There are no restric-
- tions in the number of sectors per track, number of heads or number
- of cylinders. The Turbo IDE Card Software supports any combination
- of numbers that may exist.
-
- - Hard disk cable included (other controllers need an extra cable).
-
- - One year warranty.
-
-
-
- Vulcan & Vulcan Gold Controller Replacement
- ============================================
-
-
- What about a Vulcan Platinum? Here it is !!
-
- The Turbo IDE Card is the ultimate Speedup Kit for Vulcan Hard
- Drives. It
-
- ---> doubles the speed of the <---
- ---> fastest Vulcan Gold configuration <---
-
- Indeed, using the Turbo IDE Card, your Vulcan will be RAMFast
- without ever buying a RamFAST SCSI Card.
-
- The Turbo IDE Card is *** fully pin-compatible *** with Vulcan
- hard drives. A Vulcan user can easily switch over to the Turbo IDE
- Card and has the option of upgrading his system with a second hard
- drive (external). You could even replace your old, low capacity drive
- in your Vulcan case with an up-to-date, 120 or 200 MB drive and real-
- ly save a lot of money.
-
- Note 1: Some of the older 20 MB and 40 MB Vulcan drives are not fully
- compatible with the IDE standard. Contact AE about the drive type they
- have built in. The Turbo IDE Card requires full compatibility with
- the IDE standard.
-
- Note 2: In InCider 7/92, p. 40, you can get some speed test results
- for Vulcan Gold, ZipDrive, ECON PEGASUS and TMS SHADOW. Well, just
- have a look at the "Linear Read" and "GS/OS Verify"... These are
- the numbers that really count !
-
- Here are some test results for the Turbo IDE Card (Apple IIGS at
- 2.8 MHz, GS/OS System 6.0, using ProSel-16, Statistics on Disc Ac-
- cess, Linear Read) connected to
-
- Seagate ST3102: 0.8 msec/block
- Seagate ST3120: 0.8 msec/block
- Seagate ST3144: 0.8 msec/block
- Seagate ST3283: 0.75 msec/block
-
- Conner CP 3004: 1.1 msec/block (Vulcan Gold 40)
- Conner CP 30084: 0.91 msec/block
- Conner CP 30104: 0.79 msec/block
- Conner CP 30204: 0.75 msec/block
-
-
-
-
-
- ///Turbo IDE Card - Technical Details
- ======================================
-
- - The built-in DMA sequencer transfers 512 bytes of data in one
- burst. One block of 512 bytes is transferred in 512 microseconds
- without any overhead. This is the maximum I/O speed available in
- Apple II computers. The Turbo IDE Card has no need for an extra
- 10 MHz processor to make hard drives RamFAST.
-
- - The DMA is very efficient and easy to program, simply by reading
- or writing five 8-bit-registers (DMA bank, DMA address low/high,
- DMA read/write mode and DMA start).
-
- - The DMA channel can alternatively be accessed through a 16-bit data
- port for non-DMA-modes and diagnostic purposes.
-
- - All IDE task file registers are available in the Apple slot I/O area.
-
- - Four banks of 2 KByte firmware EPROM and four banks of 512 byte
- scratch RAM are available.
-
- - The Turbo IDE Card was developed according to Apple's Interface
- Card Design and DMA Design Guidelines.
-
- - The Turbo IDE Card firmware supports the PRODOS 8 and the Smart-
- Port protocol (standard & extended calls) and is well speed-opti-
- mized. As a result, the boot time for launching GS/OS is only two
- seconds longer when the GS/OS driver is not installed.
-
- - As mentioned before, the Turbo IDE Card software supports any num-
- ber of sectors per track, number of heads and number of cylinders.
- At this time, the math routines (they have to do a lot of dividing)
- are limited to a reasonable 256 MBytes per drive. The fast math
- routines are working universally in the range of the values allowed
- in the IDE task file (17...254 sectors, 2...16 heads and up to 65535
- cylinders). Most IDE drives are limited to 50...60 sectors, 16 heads
- and 1024 cylinders.
-
- - Support for Universal Translation Mode: The installation program will
- set the hard disk(s) to any Translation Mode at user's request. This
- may be useful for some fine-tuning.
-
- - The Turbo IDE Card will support upcoming tape streamers for the
- IDE interface.
-
- - RamFAST SCSI Cards do not support GS/OS caching! Turbo IDE Cards do!
- There is still a big advantage compared with a caching SCSI card.
- When copying a large quantity of files to a hard disk partition,
- the Turbo IDE Card (supporting GS/OS caching) is very, very fast.
- A caching SCSI card, which does not support GS/OS caching, "looses"
- the directory and index blocks in its cache because the cache is
- never large enough to hold all the data, or the directory con-
- tents in the SCSI cache are overwritten by the actual data (cache
- splitting would be required to prevent that). So the SCSI card has
- to re-read some directory blocks from hard disk whenever they are
- requested by GS/OS. This results in a remarkable slow-down in
- overall speed because of the many seeks that have to be done. You
- can hear the noise of the SCSI drive when it is moving its read/
- write heads permanently. The problem of "losing" directory blocks
- in the cache is really annoying when a hard disk partition gets
- filled up more and more. A nearly empty partition never shows
- this problem.
-
- By contrast, GS/OS running with the Turbo IDE Card has most direc-
- tory and index blocks available in the GS/OS cache at any time
- without the need to do hard drive accesses.
-
- (Ordering information is in a separate posting, as per request)
- --
- ===========================================================================
- More than silver, more than gold, I need ! behrenss@informatik.
- electricity. I need it for my dreams. ! tu-muenchen.de
- (RACTER) ! FIDO: 2:246/13 Soenke Behrens
-