Conference hydra::amiga_v1

>PANIC::JACOB "Usque Ad Mortem Addendum"              15 lines   1-OCT-1990 09:54

>        Does anyone have any idea how the A590 20Meg drive compares
>        speedwise with other drives on the market. The drive in
>        question is also populated with 2meg ram. Will this work with
>        my A501 clock/ram card to give me 3meg RAM total?

I have an A500+A501+A590 (with 2MB). The total memory is 3 MB and I'm very happy
with this combination. So, if you have this occasion just jump on it. The 
difference is huge.
About speed, it's not the fastest HD but it's largely sufficient for day to day
work.

Sorin

    re .0, .1
    
    Ditto...
    
    My first hard drive was a 32meg from a third party.  I had nothing but 
    problems with it.  I've had the A590 with memory now for a year and not
    a single hiccup.
    
    Buy it!
    
    Ken
    

RE:.1,.2

Ditto!

	-SES

    
    Thanks guys...
    
    Am now the proud owner of a 3meg Ram A500 with 20Meg A590 and two
    3.5 drives. 
    
    Obviously the speed is blinding when compared to the 3.5 drives,
    but my perception is relative of course.
    
    However, if anybody does have any quoted speeds for this drive 
    and some comparison figures with others, I am still inquisitive!
    
    Thanks, Mark.
    

    Re .4:
    
>   However, if anybody does have any quoted speeds for this drive 
>   and some comparison figures with others, I am still inquisitive!
    
    The AT drive that comes in the A590 could hardly be called a speed
    demon.  It's a fair match for an unenhanced 68000, but if you want
    speed, swap it out for a SCSI drive.  (I have an A500/A590 also, and
    I think about getting a Quantum 40 drive every once in a while.)
    
    Amiga World did a comparison among the A590 and similar products from
    GVP and Supra several months ago.  The consensus on that article was
    that its measurement technique and conclusions were flawed.
    
    Since the A590's controller is virtually identical to the A2091 board,
    its speed would best be compared to same.  The A2091 has done quite
    well in head-to-head comparisons with other SCSI controllers.

    I don't own an A590 Drive myself but my friend does. I own the
    'CHEAPHD' project with an RLL miniscribe hooked up to it.
    
    Because of the fact that all the Data from my hard drive would have to
    go through the processor but a PD Hard Drive Device driver I thought
    that it would be a bit slower in the speed stakes - so I run the program 
    diskspeed to compare it to an A590.
    
    I don't have the actual number's on me (I can get them if anyone is
    interested) but basically the PD Hard Drive was faster than A590. In
    some cases there was'nt much in it but to say I was supprised is an
    understatement!!!
    
    
    Shaun.
    

It is generally recognised that the standard 20MB in the A590 is not the 
fastest of drives, but if you add a decent scsi drive off the side of it
it should perform just as well as a 2091 in a 2000.

Mike

    	I called up the Software Shop to find out if they had A590's in
    stock. It wasn't Moe, it was "the other guy". He told me they don't
    carry the A590 anymore because it is too unreliable. Then he tried to
    sell me a Xetec with a Quantum 40 Meg for a lot more $$$.
    
    	I have not seen one unfavorable remark about the A590 in this
    conference or in a review (other than the 20 meg drive is slow). He 
    didn't seem to know that the A590 allows memory expansion as he was 
    pitching that as an advantage for the Xetec. 
    
    	I guess I'll be using mail order. Has anybody had any experience
    with Montgomery Grant? They advertise it for $469. Also, what type of
    RAM chips does it use?
    
    

    Re .8:
    
>   	I called up the Software Shop to find out if they had A590's in
>   stock. It wasn't Moe, it was "the other guy". He told me they don't
>   carry the A590 anymore because it is too unreliable. Then he tried to
>   sell me a Xetec with a Quantum 40 Meg for a lot more $$$.
    
    The A590 is NOT unreliable.  Mine's worked without a hiccup for nearly
    a year now.  I suspect they make more money on the Xetec/Quantum
    combination than they do on the A590.
    
>   	I have not seen one unfavorable remark about the A590 in this
>   conference or in a review (other than the 20 meg drive is slow). He 
>   didn't seem to know that the A590 allows memory expansion as he was 
>   pitching that as an advantage for the Xetec. 
    
    He's just ignorant.  The Xetec/Quantum combination is a good setup,
    especially if you like to move your A500 around a lot or if you require
    a bigger/faster drive than the 20MB unit built into the A590.  That
    doesn't mean that there's anything WRONG with the A590.
    
>   	I guess I'll be using mail order. Has anybody had any experience
>   with Montgomery Grant? They advertise it for $469. Also, what type of
>   RAM chips does it use?
                                                  
    Commodore has been at war with Montgomery Grant for the last couple of
    years.  Commodore considers that anything bought from MG is "used" and
    ineligible for warranty coverage.
    
    The A590 uses 4x256K CMOS DRAM chips, which need to be 120nsec or
    better.  You can find 80-100nsec chips for $10-12 each these days. 
    There are 16 sockets in the A590 to accomodate 512KB, 1MB or 2MB of
    expansion RAM.  A jumper selects among "amnesia" and one of these
    values.  The upgrade took me about 15 minutes following the directions
    that accompanied the A590.

    	Wow! Thanks for the info on MG. I almost placed the order
    yesterday. I would have smoke pouring out my ears if I got it and found
    I had no warrenty coverage. I would think the magazines should refuse
    to accept advertising copy from a company that was selling
    merchandice that the manufacturer refuses to warrenty.

Re: .9

>Re: .8
>
>>   	I guess I'll be using mail order. Has anybody had any experience
>>   with Montgomery Grant? They advertise it for $469. Also, what type of
>>   RAM chips does it use?
>                                                  
>    Commodore has been at war with Montgomery Grant for the last couple of
>    years.  Commodore considers that anything bought from MG is "used" and
>    ineligible for warranty coverage.

I've heard more complaints about Montgomery Grant than any other
mail order house.  Avoid them!

Montgomery Grant gets buys all of their Commodore manufactured products
from authorized dealers that are going bankrupt.  Since Montgomery Grant
is not an authorized dealer itself, this makes all of their equipment
second hand, and ineligible for warranty work.  You have to trust
Montgomery Grant itself to do any necessary repairs.

There have been numerous allegations that Montgomery Grant sells
refurbished equipment as new.  (This story is consistent with the
way they acquire their stock!)  One fellow opened the case of his
"new," but mysteriously dirty, Amiga 2000 to find a cigarette butt.

Re: .10

>I would think the magazines should refuse to accept advertising copy
>from a company that was selling merchandice that the manufacturer
>refuses to warrenty.

When Copperman, the new president of Commodore spoke to the Boston
Computer Society last year, he expressed the same sentiment.  He
discussed this with the editors of AmigaWorld.

    
    One grouch that I do now have about my A590 is its incredibly noisy
    fan unit. It seems to work quite well 1/2 the time and then it sets
    up some kind of resonant frequency and the noise level vibrates itself
    to distraction even when my monitors volume knob is cranked up !!
    
    Anyone else got a noisy fan? Or got a suggested remedy?
    
    Mark.

>PANIC::JACOB "Usque Ad Mortem Addendum"               9 lines   9-OCT-1990 06:09
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                          -< Oh for a quiet life.... >-

>    Anyone else got a noisy fan? Or got a suggested remedy?

Me too I hate that fan noise. It upsets me and I'm quickly tired because of it.
I think the noise is constant but the longer you listen the less you resist.
I often listen music on the headphones in order avoid the fan noise (and the
music has to be heavy metal..).

Sorin

    	It' strange. I am trying to buy one of things. I have yet to find
    any place that has them in stock. Most places I have called recommend
    something else. Yet users seem to be happy, apart from fan noise. Can
    the markup be that poor? Or is it Something Else?

    Re .15:
    
    I saw an A590 at Soft Designs in Belmont a couple of weeks ago.
    
    I'm in the midst of a hassle with them over their refusal to honor the
    2yr warranty we negotiated as part of a group purchase last year, so
    this is an informational reply rather than a recommendation.

Well I've only had my A590 for a couple of months, but no complaints so far.
I've not really paid too much attention to the fan noise. It whirs away. But
then I work in an office with 6 VS2000 and there fans going all day...

Mike

    If you're looking for alternatives to the A590 for your 500 (like I
    am, getting very tired of a floppy based system after a year), check 
    out the following two drives. The Supra 500XP and the new GVP Series II
    A500-HD+. I was just about all set to spring for the Supra when a
    friend pointed me to the November AmigaWorld GVP ad on pg. 5. It is
    one slick looking drive that exactly matches the profile and contours
    of the 500. Cheapest price I've found so far is Creative Computing
    (ad in the same issue) which carries this drive (40 meg) for $599.

    -Dom

    As far as I'm concerned, the A590 is a good, solid, reliable drive. 
    I've had one for 1 year now and it hasn't given me a single problem.
    
    Yes, the capacity of the standard drive is low for today's standards,
    and the speed is a bit slow, but my main requirement for a hard drive
    is reliability.  This A590 has this in spades.  I run the drive fairly
    hard (relational databases, etc).  It is powered up approx 5 times a
    week also.  
    
    I would beware of 3rd party drives.  My first hard drive was one of
    those (the name escapes me now) and I had nothing but problems with it. 
    Sure it had 32mb and a SCSI interface, but I spent many,many hours
    formatting (high and low level) and restoring it.  Eventually I trashed
    it (literally) and bought the A590.  (I sold the parts from the first
    drive for a total of $20 at a swap meet).  The manufacturer was of no
    help whatsoever.  (The warrenty had expired before I was finally
    convicned that the hardware was at fault).
    
    I suspect the reason that most dealers keep pushing other brands of
    drives is the higher profit margin.   Before you buy one of these,
    consider this:  If the price of a 3rd party drive is less than the A590
    AND the dealer is making a higher profit margin, just where is the
    manufacturer cutting corners to get his cost down this low?
    
    Ken
    

    I have been using the Supra 500XP for about 3 months now.  It is very
    fast, has provisions for 8Mb memory, and has no internal fan.  Mine
    came with a 20Mb Conner drive, and .5 meg memory.  The Conner is a
    little noisy but becomes unnoticable after a while.  The new GVP looks
    good also, I think they have the "$100.00" trade up program on it, like
    the A2000 controllers.
    I leave my Amiga powered up all the time; I cannot tell you if
    powering it up and down affects the 500XP reliability.
    
    mark
    
    p.s. the 500xp consistently gives 500+K reads/s using diskspeed v3.1

    I just bought an A590 from Omnitek in Tewksbury for $499.  Seems like a
    very adequate unit for an A500.    

    Rather than start a new note, I figured I'd add this here so those
    looking for hard drives for the 500 can find all the information
    in one place.	

    I recently purchased a GVP Series II A500 HD+ (40 meg). This is the 
    unit that exactly matches the contours and lines of the Amiga 500. It 
    is one extremely nice looking unit. Future plans from GVP are for a 52
    meg unit and a 100 meg unit. Here are the details:

    Drive:  Fujitsu 1" high. Although advertised as a 40 meg drive, it's 
    really a 42 meg unit. The drive itself is relatively quiet.

    Noise:  The unit has an internal fan, which does take some getting used
    to. It's no noisier than my VAXStation 3500, but if you don't like fan
    noise, you should listen to a unit first rather than order it sight
    unseen (which I did). The fan noise doesn't bother me in the least, and
    I know the unit is being kept cool.

    Mini slot: Not much mention in the literature that came with it other
    than possible room for future expansion - essentially a "watch this 
    space".

    Memory: Room for up to 8 meg, using SIMMS. Takes either 1 meg (1Mx8)
    or 4 meg (4Mx8) simms (100 ns or faster). With 4 meg simms, you can go 
    to the full 8 meg. With 1 meg simms, the max. is 4 meg. So, you can have
    0, 2, 4 or 8 meg installed. I've got 2 meg of 80ns simms installed in
    mine.

    Power supply: Has it's own (oh boy, another brick!). Actually, its a
    relatively small brick, about half the size of the 500 power supply. This
    (and the fact that it has the fan) was one of the reasons I chose the
    GVP over the Supra 500XP, which was my other choice. I just don't trust
    the wimpy power supply in the 500. 

    And last but not least, it looks great! Blends in perfectly with the 500
    case, and doesn't interfere with typing.

    Speed: Here are the results of DiskSpeed tests:

DiskSpeed 3.1 - Copyright (c) 1989,90 by MKSoft Development

Device:	dh1:

Test Intensity: Med   Performance Stress: None

    8 Files/s Create
   17 Files/s Open/Close
  102 Files/s Scan
   18 Files/s Delete

  194 Seek/Read

Buffer Size	512		4096		32768		262144
---------	---------	---------	---------	---------
Bytes/s Create	    27155	   128684	   208412	   273634
Bytes/s Write	    28429	   167772	   400949	   476794
Bytes/s Read	    60865	   257533	   386794	   477926


    All in all, I'm extremely pleased with my new drive. It turns the 500
    into a whole new computer. Nothing like powering up and being at the
    WorkBench in under 30 seconds (used to take 2:30 with floppies) :-).

    -Dom