Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: dyer@alx.sticomet.com (Doug Dyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Rapidfire SCSI-II controller Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 21 Feb 1996 05:29:07 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 325 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <4geaj3$cn5@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: dyer@alx.sticomet.com (Doug Dyer) NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, SCSI, Zorro II, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 4 Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Rapidfire SCSI-II controller BRIEF DESCRIPTION Adds SCSI-II support, RAM, and an extra hard drive bay to your Amiga. Comes with software to manage all your drive controllers (i.e., the rapid fire and the A4000 IDE). AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: DKB Address: PO Box 930344 Wixom, MI 48393-0344 USA Telephone: (810) 348-3755 FAX: (810) 348-3531 E-mail: None (but on compuserve they have a DKBSOFT forum) LIST PRICE The going price (I'm not sure what list is) is a little under $150 mail order, and $150 dealership (US Dollars). I supported my dealer and shoveled out the big whopping extra $5 or so. ;) SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE Zorro-II compatible bus is required (A2000, A3000x, A4000x). SOFTWARE AmigaDOS 2.04 minimum to run the provided rapidset software. Works perfectly under 3.0. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING A4000/25, 12MB Fast RAM, 2 MB Chip RAM 1 internal high-density floppy (standard C=) 1 internal 125 MB IDE drive (standard C=) Kickstart 39.106 / Workbench 39.29 SCSI devices tested: ZIP SCSI-I (including booting) RENO SCSI-II CD Quantum SCSI-II 730S (including booting) Seagate SCSI-II 1080S (including booting) INSTALLATION The installation of the card was handled by my dealer. However the board looks to be straightforward. The software uses the Commodore Installer and is very easy to follow. REVIEW I had the dealer install a Seagate 1080 12ms SCSI-II card as my main internal drive. Like many A4000 owners, my IDE drive sometimes will not boot and I have to sit there staring at a Kickstart screen for a few minutes waiting for the drive to respond. This solves all that of course. :) The booting of workbench is now much faster over the IDE drive. I then connected the following devices externally: ZIP, RENO CD-ROM, and Quantum 730 HD. I ran the rapidset program and it scanned the bus, correctly identifying all drives. The ZIP Drive: After setting up rapidset I rebooted, popped a new zip drive in, and nothing! (You gotta partition it first). So I brought up rapidset, selected the ZIP drive, did a format (and specified bootable). I then could see the ZIP icon. I selected the ICON and did a format/quick (I tried the lengthy format but could not boot from it). I then dragged all of my workbench partition on it and booted successfully from the ZIP. I also copied a 300K photoCD image onto the zip and viewed it. The entire time I had one transfer error copying 90 Megs worth of stuff, I repeated the copy and it worked fine. I may have my max transfer too high, I don't know but I've been much harsher on it and cannot replicate it. I now have four zip disks and pop them in or out quite often. The workbench icons always show up and it always seems to work well. Btw, the ZIP drives are about as fast as the A4000 IDE drive. (It really seems that way). The CD-ROM: I used the fastlane CDrive file system to test this out. Using the devs:Mountlist.ZD0 (that came with the fastlane) I modified it to point to the correct unit and device and put it in the storage/DOSDrivers area. Now a double-click or "mount zd0:" will bring up the CD-ROM Icon. (Actually I renamed it to be cd0 :) I put a Photo-CD in and viewed the pictures using PhotoCDAGA. The Quantum: After a partitioning of the entire drive as being mountable and bootable, and a format/quick the drive has been working fine. I successfully booted off this drive. The Seagate 1080: This drive works flawlessly and makes a good reliable boot disk for the RapidFire. Access to the drive is very fast. The RapidSet software: This is the best hd controller software I have seen yet. It works in a modular fashion: You can add, edit, and remove controllers. You can also load or save your controller configuration. It comes with config files for the A4000 IDE, A3000 SCSI, RapidFire, and a few others (not fastlane). Its great to control all of your devices from one source. Once you select your controller all the devices on that controller are shown. You may get info, partition, edit the device entry, or create a mount file for your devs (or storage) directory. The device window also allows you to load or save the device config to a file and the RapidSet software comes with a few. I saved each of my drives' settings to their own file (note this is not a mount file). There are also filesystem icons. These config files and file system icons may be dragged and dropped on rapidset on certain windows. I don't really make use of it as the ASL requester is easy enough. You can also edit your mount file for a device or launch the ED editor from within RapidSet with the file in place. On-line context help is here but limited. It is not in AmigaGuide format and you cannot browse through all available help, so its hard to get the big picture. Rapidset has a feature called an emergency disk that you must format and install. Before quitting rapidset it asks you if you wish to update your rapid-recover boot disk. What it is doing and how to make use of it is a mystery. I wish it got a paragraph in the documentation :( The RapidFire hardware: It has two SIMM sockets for adding any mix of 72-pin 1/2/4/8 Meg SIMMS 80ns or less, and a hard drive bay for a 3.5" drive or "hardcard". I did not make use of either (Unfortunately I'm stuck with some Fastlane 30-pin SIMMs). I can see how that extra drive bay would be very useful, especially as most of us are stuck with smaller HD drives and need their bay for newer drives. I have one internal device on the SCSI bus and three external. All function well together. The hardware provides (and my dealer used) an LED connection for your computer's front panel. It will light up whenever the SCSI devices are accessed. Very useful to show activity from the internal drives. The problem is that the light will flick once a second as it apparently does some SCSI thing with external devices. If you do not have external devices then the light will not do this. DOCUMENTATION Rapidfire comes with the following documentation: * A small pamphlet (I'm not kidding) including a paragraph on installation, a page on adding SIMMS, etc. Very sparse and much too little. * A small (1 page) readme file on the RapidSet program (again, really disappointing) * On-line, context-sensitive help from the RapidSet program. This is not an AmigaGuide file and you cannot browse through the documentation, only the help on the current window is available. The documentation quality is a severe drawback. Luckily the RapidSet easy of use is very high. You will want further reading material on the SCSI bus as the documentation is written for beginners but not enough to be useful at any level. LIKES Works solidly with every device I have thrown at it. The RapidSet program works with all your controllers and devices, and is very easy to use. RapidSet will create DOSDrivers/xxx mount files for you and place them in either STORAGE or DEVS depending on whether you want automount or not. Provides ability to mount additional internal drive onto the card. Passthrough to connect external LED light on your computer's front panel to the RapidFire SCSI bus. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS The performance suffers if you are accessing two disks on the card at once (this is not a DMA device). So formatting one disk (say, a ZIP) and accessing another is notably slower. The documentation really needs to be beefed up. The on-line help should be in AmigaGuide format which would allow us to browse all the documentation of rapidset at once. It's Zorro II (though in fairness the price reflects this). COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I had a used Fastlane which was faulty but I can compare some of the features of the two: Fastlane documentation was far superior (both amount and quality). The Fastlane manual went into detail about the SCSI bus, mentioned the performance issues on putting RAM on the card, etc. Fastlane came with disk caching software and CD-ROM file system (CDrive). The DKB comes with neither. The DKB RapidSet program is however the best controller software around. And in the end, this is going to be your single most important bundle. BUGS I found no bugs. VENDOR SUPPORT I have contacted DKB for support regarding the Quantum 730 drive. It was after my RENO CD-ROM drive in the chain and I couldn't boot with it attached. The DKB person was very impatient and made me feel like I really shouldn't have called (Boy was this guy impatient). I then called my dealer and he reminded me that CD-ROMs also have internal termination (There is a dip switch on the inside of the Reno). Though it was my SCSI ignorance, this _is_ tech support ya know :) WARRANTY The product contains a one year warranty on manufacturing defects. CONCLUSIONS The bottom line is this is a solid product and its being supported. It works great with ZIP's CD-ROMs, fast HD drives and its affordable. Its Zorro-II but the card still performs very fast (at the expense of your CPU). Also, the RapidSet software is great. Rating: 4 stars out 5. Would give them 5 if they documented it properly. Comparison Note: fastlane gets a 5 out of 5. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Hey, this review is PD! Doug Dyer - dyer@alx.sticomet.com | ECL: embedded scripting STI: voice (703) 329-9707 | for the 8051 family make: fatal error: don't know how to make cheese --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews