DTP Toolbox/DTPToolbox.iso/textfiles/reviews/powercomputing.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-04-27 | 13.1 KB

Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (G. Moran)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Power Computing CD-ROM drive
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 20 Apr 1995 18:15:40 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 301
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <3n68cc$[e-mail]>
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NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu
Keywords: hardware, CD-ROM, SCSI, PCMCIA, A1200, commercial
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    Power Computing CD-ROM Drive


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    The Power CD-ROM drive is an external SCSI drive for the A1200.  It
comes with a PCMCIA SCSI adaptor (an unbadged HiSoft Squirrel device)


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        Power Computing
    Address:    44 a/b Stanley Street
            Bedford
            MK41 &RW
            England

    Telephone:    [phone]
    Fax:        [phone]


LIST PRICE

    I purchased the package directly from Power for 199 UK Pounds.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        An Amiga 1200.
        Also usable on an Amiga 600 with some limitations.

    SOFTWARE

        None.  It comes with its own driver software and CD32
        emulation.


COPY PROTECTION

    None.


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 1200.
    Philips CM8833 Monitor.
    80 Meg Internal IDE hard drive.
    MTEC Accelerator-
        68030 CPU running at 28 MHz
        68882 FPU running at 28 MHz
        4 MB RAM

REVIEW

    I had been looking to buy a CDROM drive for my A1200 for some time.
However, the available options were limiting - an Archos Overdrive which was
basically an AT-Bus drive with A1200 interface (no further expansion
potential), or an accelerator with a SCSI card (not easy to source, and I
already had an accelerator card).  When I saw the adverts for the Power CD
ROM drive, it seemed ideal with its SCSI interface, and early magazine
reviews were favourable.

    The drive itself comes in an attractive, off-white, metal case, which
is little larger than the drive mechanism itself - about 15x4x26cm deep.  On
the back panel there are 2 large amphenol-style SCSI connectors, phono
sockets for Amiga audio in and mixed audio out, and a connector for an
external DC power supply.  It's clear that for cost reasons, Power have
decided to manufacture their own external casing rather than use a more
standard (and expensive) external SCSI box, and this has advantages and
disadvantages.  Advantages are that the unit is more compact and cheaper,
but compromises mean that an external DC unit has to be used and the drive
is internally terminated.  This means that despite the dual SCSI connectors,
the Power Drive must be the last drive in the chain.  Also, the drive has
the SCSI ID # internally set (in this case, to 3) and in order to change
this, one must dismantle the case and set jumpers - not the easiest of
operations to perform.  Still, most users will have little need to change
the SCSI ID anyway.

    The front panel is the standard drawer with an eject button, busy
light, headphone socket and volume control.  There's a small hole to stick a
paperclip in for emergency eject.  It should be noted that the volume
control affects the headphones output only, and not the volume on the phono
plugs at the back.

    The drive mechanism is a double-speed Sanyo device.  The manuals
list it as being a CDR-H94S type, but the SCSI mounter reports it as a Sanyo
CRD 250S.  Sysinfo gives it a speed of 315,836 bytes per second which is
pretty much on par for a double speed CD.  Certainly, although it's not as
quick as a modern HD, it's more than acceptable for getting archives off of
CD or playing games from.

    In order to interface the drive to the A1200, a PCMCIA card adaptor
is provided.  Although the instructions don't mention it, this is a HiSoft
Squirrel SCSI adaptor.  The squirrel has been reviewed as an adaptor before
on c.s.a.reviews, so check that review out for a more in-depth description
of the interface.

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  See the file hardware/scsi/Squirrel in our
    archives.  - Dan]

Suffice to say that it does a perfectly good job as an interface to the
CDROM drive and, being SCSI, leaves the door open for adding future SCSI
devices like hard disks, DAT drives, or even devices like the new Iomega ZIP
drive.  This is a strong point in favour of the package - you are not just
getting a CDROM drive, you are getting an interface which allows access to a
vast range of external data products.  The only reservation I would have is
the rather short cable coming from the Squirrel - it's only about 40 cm long
and comes directly out of the interface, rather than being detachable.  It
makes placement of the CD drive awkward, and you will need to buy an adaptor
in order to use devices with the increasingly common compact 50-way D plug
interface.

    Power Computing supplies two disks - one of which is the standard
HiSoft Squirrel driver disk, which has an installer script to load the CD
drivers and the CD32 emulator onto your hard disk, or can make a special
boot floppy to boot into CD32 games from.  The second disk contains some PD
utilities like an audio CD player and some photo CD readers.  Obviously no
support is provided from Power for the PD stuff, and some of the utilities
are shareware so you will have to register them if you intend to keep using
them.

    Installation is pretty much a matter of plug in and go.  Leads are
provided to link the phono sound outputs of the Amiga to the CDROM drive,
and you just use the leads you were using for the Amiga to link the CD/Amiga
mixed output to your monitor or HiFi.  If you are using the RF output of your
Amiga to view the display on a TV set, then you are out of luck, as you will
be unable to get a mixed audio signal from the Amiga and CD on your TV.
This is an inconvenience, but I'd recommend moving to using some sort of
proper audio system anyway as the increased sound quality offered by CD
titles will be wasted on a TV set.  Running the installer scripts results in
quite a painless procedure where everything is set up on your hard drive.
If you are using floppies, things are more complicated, as you need to make a
special boot disk in order to access the drive.  This is because SCSI drives
on the Squirrel interface can't self boot.  You may well need to add things
to the boot disk for your system, as the installer just creates a basic boot
disk and you may have made many customisations to your Workbench disk.

    Now, when you boot your Amiga from HD (or with the boot floppy), the
machine will attempt to boot from the CD drive if a CD32 disk is present.
The whole process of setting up the CD boot takes about 10-15 seconds and
this will happen whether or not you have a bootable CD in, so your Workbench
bootup now takes quite a bit longer which can be irritating.  It'd be nice
to see some way of bypassing the CD initialisation process for those times
when you don't need to access the CD drive.

    Assuming you had a CD32 disk in the drive, the emulator will attempt
to run it.  I found it to be very good.  I tried 4 CD32 titles - Microcosm,
Liberation, Flink and Super Putty.  It ran three of the titles with the only
non-working one being Super Putty.  This title apparently won't work with
any of the other available CD32 emulation systems either.  In general,
compatibility should be at about 85%+.  If you can find a list of titles
compatible with the Zappo (Archos Overdrive) drive, it's a good bet that the
Zappo compatible titles will also work on the Power drive, and the
incompatible ones won't.  HiSoft are working on updates all the time and
release them on Aminet.  If you desperately need a specific title to work,
check with Power/HiSoft first or put out a message on Usenet as there is
bound to be someone who has tried it before you.

    If you haven't booted a CD32 disk then you go into Workbench, but
you now have access to a new device called CD0: which is the CDROM drive.
Just put any standard CDROM disk in and you can read it in CD0:.

    Personally although much is made in the advertising of the CD32 game
compatibility I must say that I derive most value from it as a way of
accessing 'serious' disks like the Aminet archives.  I have tried it with
the Aminet 1-4 set, the 17-bit software collection, various Amiga CD cover
disks, a CD-R (recordable CD disk) and a variety of PC CDROM disks with
absolutely no problems.  Access to disks is speedy and for pulling archives
off CD, the drive is perfect.  If you have a good file management tool like
'Directory Opus' you will find it an invaluable tool and the combination of
the Power Drive, Directory Opus and a hard disk makes for a useful system.


DOCUMENTATION

    The documentation for the package consists of a well-written, but
rather sparse, manual and the standard Sanyo manual for the CDROM mechanism
(which could be useful if you want to transfer the drive to a PC or 'big
box' Amiga at a later date).

    I'd have liked to see a more comprehensive 'getting started' guide,
but the information provided does give enough for even a moderately
experienced user to get by on.


LIKES

    + The drive is well built.

    + Performance is good: obviously not quad-speed level, but it is
    going to be good enough for any Amiga use.

    + You get a full SCSI interface which gives a lot of additional
    flexibility.

    + The CD32 emulation seems to be quite robust.  With an accelerated
    system with Fast RAM, you will get much better performance on many
    games than with a real CD32.

    + The price is good.


DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

    - I'm not impressed with the external power supply.  This is a
    standard cheap DC adaptor with a 5-way multi plug connector.  It has
    reversible polarity, so there's a chance you could fry your drive if
    the polarity got switched the wrong way somehow.  Also, I found you
    really needed to set the voltage level to 12v in order to get proper
    reliability reading the outer tracks of CDs.  It came with a level
    of 9.5v set.  I would like to see a dedicated adaptor with only the
    one connector on it to avoid confusion.

    - It would be nice if the drive didn't have to be the last drive on
    the chain.  This _could_ cause problems with other devices if they
    had a similar limitation.  Also, it would be nice to have an easy
    way to switch SCSI ID in those cases where a user might be using the
    drive with another system.

    - You will need a CD32 type joypad to get full use out of some CD32
    titles.  I use the excellent Competion Pro 'Super CD32' pad and I
    notice that a rival drive (the Archos overdrive) now comes bundled
    with this.  It would be nice to have this as part of the bundle (at
    no extra cost of course!).


COMPARISON TO OTHER PRODUCTS

    From what I've seen of the Zappo drive, the Power CD beats it hands
down in expansion potential.  As a simple CD32 games player, both drives
are about equal in capability but the Power has a more compatible feel by
virtue of it being a standard SCSI device.  Both are a similar price, but
some dealers sell the Zappo in a bundle that includes some games and a
joypad so pure games players might prefer that.  For serious users though,
the Power is the superior drive.


BUGS

    Apart from the PSU voltage being set too low, I haven't come across
any bugs in either the hardware or software.


VENDOR SUPPORT

    Hmmm, well after a faulty mechanism in my first drive, I have to say
the Power tech support people can be hard to reach - they don't work
Saturdays and only work 10:30 to 4:30 weekdays.  On the other hand, they
were friendly enough when I did talk to them and promptly gave me a return
authorisation.  I shipped the drive back Monday lunchtime and had a new one
(that worked perfectly) on Thursday of the same week.  That's pretty good
service.


WARRANTY

    No mention of warranty in the documentation.  I think it's 90 days,
but best check with Power if you are concerned.


CONCLUSIONS

    This product gets my definite recommendation.  It's well priced, well
specified, and will give your Amiga 1200 system a new lease of life.
Compatibility with CD32 is good and the ability to access products like the
Aminet set and the GoldFish CDs in my view justifies the cost of the drive
to any serious user.

    If you have already got an accelerator card without SCSI interface,
then this is an excellent way to access CDROM technology and to gain a SCSI
port in one fell swoop.  If you are just considering getting a CDROM drive to
play CD32 games then get this as it gives you a decent CD32 emulator (with
better than CD32 performance on a fast system) and opens the way for lots of
exciting products in the future.

    I rate this product as excellent - 88% out of 100.  (It would have
been more but for a few niggles with presentation.)


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    You can freely distribute this article over the Internet, but for any
conventional 'newsprint' publication you must ask my permission first.  If
you publish this electronically over the Internet (or elsewhere) please
credit this article to me and include my email address.

- [e-mail]


---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
   Send reviews to:    [e-mail]
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