03/08/98 - Sunday's News:
- Bottom Line Weekly Specials: This week's specials include Removable media drives, Scanners, Digital Cameras and special pricing on G3 CPU cards from
Newer Tech, PowerLogix and XLR8. Click here to view the complete list:
- MacGurus Updated Pricing: MacGurus has updated their ad with lower prices on the Jackhammer (fastest SCSI card in my tests) and also lower Cheetah drive prices.
- More Initio Miles SCSI card Feedback: Here is some of the latest notes on the Initio SCSI card received yesterday:
Mychailo Toloczko wrote:
"
The folks at Initio were the people who turned me on to the RD 202 [Ram Doubler 2]
incompatibility. Apparently, they had never tested the card with RD. I
think they know the nature of the problem too. It has to do with the code
that the Initio card loads from the BIOS to the RAM (I guess the system
heap) at startup. In my limited understanding, I think they tag the code
in the RAM in such a way that RD thinks it will no longer be used and frees
up the RAM. But don't quote me on that. It wasn't clear to me that they
were aware of a problem with VM, but I informed them of my results and
suggested they post a note on their website.
My machine is running perfectly with the Initio card and a single Atlas II
2.1 GB drive (and Softraid 2.0). I've got an 1 GB atlas attached to the
internal Fast SCSI-II controller on my 7500, and have not had any problems.
It is terminated correctly though. ;-)
I've been able to run MacBench 4.0 on my single drive config without any
problems. I saw in your tests that you also had no problems with a single
drive but had difficulty with a single card/two drive combo. I'm hoping
that I won't experience that problem, because as you said, it is a bit
troubling. Can you tell me if you had VM on or off for the tests you did?
[Virtual Memory was OFF -Mike]"
Patrick Talamas wrote "
I just installed an Intitio miles and an IBM Ultrastar 4.3 gig into my
Performa 6400/200. Everything works great, except that I can't seem to
acess my zip drive, which I plugged into the card. It works fine on the
standard SCSI bus, but when connected to the card via adapter cable the
Iomega driver can't find it. Apple System Profiler shows that it's there,
as well as Charismac Anubis.
What's up? My Performa has 88 megs of RAM, a
zip drive, microtek scanner plugged into the zip drive, an epson printer,
and the aforementioned miles card and IBM ultrastar. I'm thinking of just
going back to standard SCSI after reading about your slow device/PCI card
stuff today. [I can't say why the ZIP had problems, but I'd never suggest attaching a slow ZIP to a PCI SCSI card. Since the drive does not exceed 2MB/Sec, leave it attached to the std external Mac SCSI port.-Mike]" Interesting tidbit about the Initio. It appears that CharisMac did the bios for the card.
- News.com has an article on Citrix Systems new server software that allows
Mac and Unix workstations access to Windows programs running off a server.
They also have a story on Apple's low key response to protests against dropping the Newton. Many protesters asked why the Newton division was closed instead of sold to Sony, Dell (?) or Umax.
- James Prete reported consistent problems with the Adaptec 2930B SCSI cards in
the PowerCenter Pro systems he bought from MacWarehouse:
"
Howdy, long-time reader, first-time mailer....
I bought 5 PCP 210 and 2 PCP240 refurished from MacWarehouse.
No problem expect for the SCSI card. Adaptec 2930B? What is that?
[It's a narrow only PCI SCSI card made for PowerCC by Adaptec. It uses
a different controller chip than the 2940UW.-Mike}
Any information? I looked in vain for flashers on the Adaptec site, in
fact, I looked for any information I could find on this card but came up empty.
[There is no updates or support at Adaptec's site. I doubt there ever will be.-Mike]
Here is the problem, the cards all appear to be unusually unreliable, I
have actually had BAD BLOCKs on one drive (I know that sounds a little naive but
actually, they are quite rare on short-lived drives).
Lockups, bla bla bla, In any case, I moved the drives to the motherboard
scsi and no problems at all. No speed either....."
He says he had done all the usual things - reseated the cards, checked cable connections, etc. I asked him to verify that the Riser Board (contains the PCI slot connectors) was fully seated in the motherboard as mine was not (one end was cocked up a bit). One possiblity I thought of after his latest mail stating the machines came with OS8 was that possibly the disks were prepped with HDT 2.0.x PE, which may not be fully compatible with OS8. However since they seem to work fine off the motherboard SCSI that may not be a problem. I still suggest installing Apple's Drive Setup 1.3.1 or 1.4 driver and reformatting the drives while attached to the
2930B as a possible (but time consuming) solution. That means reinstalling all the software of course. It may be worth trying to get MacWarehouse to replace the 2930B
cards first, but if more than one of them is having a problem I suspect some sort of software problem.
- ZIP Plus Drive Info: In response to a reader post on Friday's news about having problems with the new Iomega ZIP Plus drives, Mike Ivancic wrote:
"
Iomega recommends that the Zip Plus be the first device in the SCSI
chain. I've been using one for three or four months now without any
problems on my PowerMac 6400/180, 5300cs, Sony VAIO 150 (PC) and my
wife's PC laptop. If you have to use this drive in a mixed computer
environment the auto sensing feature is very handy."
That advice didn't seem to help Robert Friede, as he wrote it was
"causing the flashing ? mark whenever the scsi cable's attached to the computer, regardless of where the Zip is in the chain, or even alone by itself.". I think their comment that it should be the first device may
say something about the design IMHO. The ZIP Plus does have a lot of advantages over the original ZIP drives, with the dual interface (Parallel/SCSI), on/off switch, and smaller wall-wart (power supply). Like it or not, a ZIP drive
is almost manditory today for sharing data (I call it a necessary evil ;-)
- Toshiba 32X SCSI CDROM Feedback: Several weeks ago I wrote about buying a Toshiba 32X (6201B) SCSI CDROM at a Computer show for $99, and of the problem finding a extension to work with it. Several readers sent suggestions and even a freeware extension (Sunset) but none really performed well. The best MacBench Score I got was only 50% better than the stock NEC 8X cdrom delivered. Many gave no better scores than the 8X. The one possiblity I've not tried yet is FWB's CDROM ToolKit 3.01 with the 6201B "personality" file. Peter I. Lin wrote in with a report of that combination:
"
With CDT 3.0.1, I get a MacBench score of between 750-800. However,
my disk cache in the memory control panel is set to 7168k, so I don't
know if that significantly affects the score. I have always found that
CDT consistently produces higher results than other drivers.
My main concern is the system freeze that I get with CDT. FWB had
released a personality file for the Toshiba drive towards the end of
Feburary called "Toshiba XM-6201B-S" but released another one a few days
ago called "Toshiba XM-6201". I'm assuming that this means that they are
aware of a problem with this drive. I've also tried using CharisMac
drivers and Apple CD-ROM 5.3.1, and my problems go away. However,
performance is not as good as with CDT...
"
With a 512K disk cache, the best score I obtained was about 650. I'll test with a 7MB cache to see how much that boosts scores. In hard disk tests MacBench shows much higher scores with a larger cache usually, but not sure if the CDROM tests will show the same benefit.
- This weekend has been a total wash, with most of my time spend in WinDoze 3D programs. I've seen dozens of GPFs - losing work. No system hangs but it has been the most frustrating weekend in recent memory. Sorry the news is light but I'm under the gun on a project needed for my full-time job (due tomorrow - no way that's possible). I'm so sick of windows I could heave.
Yesterday's News
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