Subject: REVIEW: AIR I3010HD internal high-density floppy drive for A3000
From: [email-masked] (Wayne Rigby)
Date: 13 Dec 1994 15:28:48 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews

PRODUCT NAME

	AIR I3010HD internal high-density floppy drive for the Amiga 3000

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

	This is a Chinon FZ-357A high density floppy drive (the same type
Commodore used) packaged by AIR.  It is meant to be used as an internal
floppy drive on Commodore Amiga 3000 series computers.

AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

	Name:		Advanced Integration Research (AIR)
	Address:	3006 North Main Street
			Logan, Utah  84321
			USA

	Telephone:	(801) 753-4947

LIST PRICE

	I paid $139.95 (US) for each I3010HD.

SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

	Requires at least AmigaDOS 2.1, i.e. Kickstart 2.04 or better and
	Workbench 2.1 or better.  This product also requires an Amiga 3000.

	HARDWARE

		An Amiga 3000 computer.  This drive probably could be
		mounted in an Amiga 3000T, 2000, 4000 or 4000T series
		computer, but you would have to provide your own mounting
		screws.  A similar version is mentioned in the brochure
		for the 2000 series computers.

	SOFTWARE
	
		AmigaDOS 2.1 or better; i.e., Kickstart 2.04 or better and
		Workbench 2.1 or better.  Works under AmigaDOS 3.1.

COPY PROTECTION

	None.

MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

	Amiga 3000-25, 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM
	Maxtor 120 MB internal hard drive
	Bernoulli The Box 150 removable media drive
	MultiFaceCard III serial and parallel card
	ZyXEL U-1496E 16.8 kbaud modem
	IDEK Iiyama MF-5021 multisync monitor
	Kickstart version 40.68 and Workbench version 40.42

	And every possible combination of 2 AIR I3010HD 1.76 MB internal
floppy drives and my original Chinon FB-354 880 kB internal floppy drive.

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]

	Installation can be either easy or rather laborious.  I highly
suggest finding someone else to install these drives in your 3000, if you
can find someone who is willing to go through the trouble.  Do not forget to
indicate to this person whether or not it is acceptable to cut away at the
front of your Amiga's case.

	The so-called "easy" way, which is what I finally decided upon, is
to leave the cover to your 3000 off, permanently.  This is not suggested in
many environments, as this leaves your computer open to anything that might
fall its way, such as dust, a fumbled glass of water, a heavy brick, and so
forth... all of which could possibly be quite harmful to your computer.  And
it also leaves your Amiga's internals bare and defenseless from the casual
touch which may deliver a fatal static electricity discharge.  I highly DO
NOT suggest this way of installing these floppy drives.  Over the next
several months, I will be slowly installing the floppy drives the proper way
until I can close my 3000's case.

	The laborious and somewhat difficult way of installing these floppy
drives, which also happens to be the correct way, requires some good use of a
metal file.  The Chinon FZ-357A floppy drives in the AIR I3010HD package are
not as tall as the standard FB-354 floppy drives in most A3000's.  Actually,
they are smaller in all dimensions than my original FB-354.  This requires
the use of four metal spacers and long screws (both provided by AIR in the
package) to mount the floppy drive high enough to allow floppies to be
inserted through the plastic case front and into the drive mechanism.
However, these spacers are too tall.  This requires, as stated in the basic
and slightly scrambled instructions, taking a metal file to the spacers to
file them down about 1/16th of an inch (approximately 1-2 millimeters).  I
tried using several washers stacked up instead of filing away slowly at the
spacers.  This worked great, except for the fact that I could not find any
washers with a small enough circumference to fit in the spare mounting
bracket in the 3000.  This bracket is a U-shaped piece of metal.  The sides
of the U go around the edges of the floppy drive.  It is tight enough that I
would guess that I really do not need any screws to hold it in place, except
for the height problem.  Unfortunately, the screw holes on the floppy drive
are so close to the edges that none of the hardware stores in my area
carried washers that would fit with room enough to allow the screws to go
through their centers and into the floppy.  At this point, one can finally
push a floppy through a closed 3000's case and have it easily insert and
eject from the drive.

	Now, however, there is a new problem not mentioned in the slim
instructions.  Once the floppy drive is at the right height, the eject
button no longer fits through the 3000 case's eject button slot.  The eject
button on the AIR I3010HD floppy drive is not the nice, contoured and wide
button on stock Amiga 3000 floppy drives.  Rather, it is the standard
straight and fat eject button.  This button ends up having its right edge
just a little beyond the right edge of the eject button slot.  Its left edge
is less than half way across the slot.  That is, these buttons are about half
the width of the standard 3000 floppy eject buttons.  Also, the button is so
thick that it barely fits through the slot, if it were at the correct
height.  In my case, I somehow have to file away approximately the top half
of the eject button and a little bit of its right side to get it to fit
through the eject button slot.  It may be easier to cut away at the 3000's
case and enlarge the slot; however, I am not willing to do this.

	Now another, more minor, problem is that the floppy's busy light is
not at the correct height to fit in the cover's light dimple.  This is not a
big problem, but the LED (Light Emitting Diode) will get squashed, but will
still be viewable when the case is closed.

	Now, some small details about what to name the floppy.  In my case,
I bought two of these high density floppy drives and have one mounted as DF0
and the other as DF1.  To accomplish this, there is a set of jumpers on the
back of the floppies.  The settings are listed not only in the installation
instructions, but also on the back of the floppy drives, themselves.  The
DF0 floppy drive has its jumper set to DS0, and the DF1 drive is set to
DS1.  The DF0 drive goes on the end of the floppy cable, after the twist,
and the DF1 drive is attached to the middle of the cable.  This puts DF0
nearest the power switch.

	There is a jumper (J351) on the 3000's mother board, near the
daughter board slot, under where a Zorro card would be installed.  In this
case, do not change the jumper.  Leave it set to NODF1.  Whenever one of
these high density floppy drives are in the DF1 position, this jumper should
always be set to NODF1.  [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  Strange but true!  - Dan]  If a
normal, double density floppy drive is to be DF1, then jumper J351 should be
moved to the DF1 position.  If this is not done, then the system will not
recognize that a second floppy drive exists.

REVIEW

	These drives work just fine.  The first one that I received, however,
had a bad alignment problem.  It would format neither double nor high
density floppies, failing on the higher numbered cylinders.  After returning
this drive, I was sent back a replacement drive that worked just fine.

	The drives handle double density floppies just like my original
double density floppy drive does.  They can format, boot from, read, and
write standard Amiga 880 KB floppies with any filesystem (e.g., OFS, FFS,
FFS-International, FFS-DirCache, and so forth).  They also handle MS-DOS 720
KB formatted double density floppies just fine, when using CrossDOS.

	The drives also handle high density floppies, both AmigaDOS 1.76 MB
formats and MS-DOS 1.44 MB formatted floppies.  One thing to note:  if you
have one of these drives as DF1 and you cannot get the system to recognize
anything bigger than 880 KB for formatting, then it is likely that jumper
J351 is set incorrectly (described under INSTALLATION, above).  In this
case, it should be set to NODF1.  CrossDOS will report a "table allocation
error" if a 1.44 MB floppy is inserted into DF1 when this jumper is set
incorrectly.

	After both high density drives were installed, I subjected them to
various tests.  This included formatting both high and double density
floppies in various Amiga formats and MS-DOS formats.  I simultaneously
formatted floppies in both drives, copied one floppy to another, booted from
either floppy (though DF1 required holding down both mouse buttons to get
the boot menu), and so forth.  I also did this with my original double
density floppy drive and one high density floppy drive installed, though not
as intensely.  In all cases, they performed flawlessly.

	I then tried to wanted to make a high density floppy bootable.  I
had no luck checking the index of the AmigaOS 3.1 DOS manual, which just led
me to instructions on how to copy the original (double density) Workbench3.1
floppy to make such a disk.  Then, someone helpfully pointed me towards the
INSTALL command.  I then used this to create a 1.76 megabyte bootable
floppy.  This worked just wonderful.  Having twice the space for various
odds and ends on a bootable floppy is a big help, even though I practically
never boot from floppy.  But it makes a great emergency boot disk to help
recover from severe errors.

DOCUMENTATION

	The documentation that comes with the AIR I3010HD floppy drive is
very sparse, though much more detailed than the instructions on how to
install the AmigaDOS 3.1 ROMs.  The instructions consists of one 8.5"x17"
piece of paper, printed on both sides.  This sheet contains the installation
instructions for AIR A1010 external, A2010 internal, A3010 internal, A5010
internal, I3010 internal, and I2010 internal drives for all models, 2000
series, 3000 series, 500 series, 3000 series, and 2000 series computers,
respectively.  The last two are high density models.

	There are six small diagrams that are somewhat useful.  For
installing my I3010HD drives, I had to peruse the instructions for the
I3010HD, A3010, and A2010 models to extract all the information I needed.
And even then, there was a bit of trial and error involved, especially in
determining the exact use of the J351 DF1 floppy selection jumper.

	There is one section of relevant instructions I have not been able
to test out.  This is the interfacing of the I3010HD floppy drives so that
bridgeboards can use them to read, write, and format MS-DOS 1.44 megabyte
floppies.  I do not own a bridgeboard.

	The instructions are very sparse and could use quite a bit of
improvement.  If the entire sheet were used solely for a particular model of
floppy drive, there would be plenty of room to contain all the specifics
that a novice would need to install a drive.  As it is, the instructions are
written for someone familiar with installing computer hardware.

LIKES

	I like being able to store twice the usual amount of data on each
floppy.  It is also nice being able to use MS-DOS 1.44 megabyte floppies to
transfer big files between UNIX boxes and MS-DOS boxes without having to
split files in half and use two MS-DOS double density floppies.  This is
compounded by the fact that the UNIX "mtools" available on some UNIX
platforms will not read from nor write to double density floppies.  This
requires a high density floppy to save things from the Unix machine, and
then an MS-DOS machine to transfer them to double density floppies to be
ready by Amigas.  With these new high density floppy drives installed,
however, all of this nonsense is eliminated.  In all respects, these floppy
drives function well.

	I also like the fact that no software patch is required to allow
these drives to work.  It makes the already too difficult installation
process that much simpler.

DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS

	I highly dislike the laborious installation process involved in
getting these drives to fit inside a 3000's case.  At the least, I would
like spacers that are the correct height.  Filing those tiny pieces of metal
down takes a few hours of careful work.  Eject buttons that fit the 3000's
case are also highly desirable.  Being able to open my 3000's case, slap
the drives in, and then close the computer up and have the drives work
is the ideal installation process.  Having to file and carefully fit each
drive to the 3000's case is a painful process.

	The instructions definitely need some improvement.  I could sit down
in front of a word processor for a couple hours and come out with something
professionally slick and more detailed than what I received with the drive.

COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	I have had no experience with any other high density, or even double
density, floppy drives for the Amiga 3000, except for the double density
drive that came with my 3000.  This drive fits in my 3000 very nicely and
was definitely designed specifically for the 3000.  The AIR I3010HD drives,
on the other hand, are designed generically, with no specific computer in
mind, and have been minimally packaged with spacers and mounting screws to
make them remotely possible to mount in a 3000, internally.

BUGS

	No bugs are present, in particular, unless you consider having to
custom shape several parts of the drive to your computer a bug.

VENDOR SUPPORT

	I have had no contact with AIR, so cannot comment.

WARRANTY

	The drives are covered by a one year warranty

CONCLUSIONS

	I am very ambivalent about this product.  It works as desired and
advertised, but the installation process is extremely laborious.  One would
have to go through just about as much work if they just bought internal high
density floppy drives meant for the 2000 or 4000 and tried installing them
inside a 3000.  I would rate this product as being not particularly good,
perhaps 1 star out of 5.

--
Wayne Rigby                B.S. Computer and Systems Engineering
[email-masked]           M.S. Electrical Engineering (Parallel Computing)
---

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