SyQuest 88 Meg Removable Media Hard Drive (External)  Robert Byrne   ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿? This is a brief description of a SyQuest drive I recently purchased from MegaDisc and if you ever had any questions about the performance and operation of this drive, as I did, perhaps they will be answered here. Firstly, thanks to MegaDisc for the fast response to my order, from posting the cheque to delivery, 6 days. BIO:- I have been using an Amiga for about four years, my main interests being graphics and animation. I am currently exploring Desktop Video. My equipment consists of an A3000 with 18 Megs of RAM, two internal 52 Meg Quantums, one external floppy and of course the SyQuest. I recently fitted an OpalVision card - beg, borrow or steal - well maybe just beg or borrow to get one of these masterpieces in hardware. This is why I purchased the extra drive, you need lots of disk space for 24-bit files, my latest animation of 102 frames in LOW RES used up over 9 Meg using only 15 bit-planes. The drive has a very solidly constructed case measuring 247w x 282d x 58h (mm) and comes supplied with its own built in power supply, cooling fan, power lead and SCSI cable. The SCSI cable is 50 pin at the drive end and has a Terminator connector attached, the pass through connector is also 50 pin. For those into colour coordination, the case is an off-white, slightly lighter than the computer. The drive has its own power switch and can be turned on and off independant of the computer. The documentation supplied is extensive, but is based on Apple and MS-DOS systems with only one paragraph devoted to the Amiga. However, the installation is basically the same and with the supplied QuickStart card you can be up and running within half an hour. The only criticism I have is that not all contingencies are catered for when first booting, or for that matter, after booting. You are told to switch on the drive first, then the computer. What happens if you switch on the drive after the computer, or switch the drive off and back on without re-booting? Well, I was pleasantly surprised at the flexibility of this hardware. Here are the results of a few scenarios:-  1. Switch the drive on first, no cartridge inserted and boot. Result: the computer takes about 30 seconds to try and mount the drive, but can't because there is no cartridge in it. It then boots as normal but doesn't recognise the drive when you do insert a cartridge. I'll explain a remedy for this later.  2. Switch the drive on first, insert cartridge and boot. Result: Perfect, no reduction in start-up time and an icon appears on the Workbench screen representing the drive.  3. Switch the computer on only and boot, then switch the drive on and  insert a cartridge. Result: no reduction in start-up time, drive doesn't mount.  4. Follow item 2 above then remove the cartridge and switch the drive  off, switch the drive on and insert a cartridge. Result: the cartridge mounts okay. I find this a benefit if you know you won't need your drive for some hours, it could extend the life of the drive mechanism (BTW - 60,000 power-on-hours). If you want a speedy boot, who doesn't, scenario 1 is out. Scenario 2 is good, the drive powers up to speed very quickly and the cartridge validation time is satisfactory. Scenario 3 is probably the one I will use most, switching the drive on when required. Because the drive will not auto-config if switched on after booting, it can be MOUNTed. Some mention is made of this in the manual but a Mountlist entry is not supplied, so I created one. It works fine but in its present form I lose some speed. Using scenario 2 and testing with Nic Wilson's SysInfo, speed was about 950,000 bytes/sec (using a cache buffer of 500), but this drops to approximately 500,000 bytes/sec when I mount the drive from the CLI. The Mountlist entry is at the end of this article, perhaps someone can suggest a modification to bring the transfer rate up to par. I chose a MAXTRANSFER of 32Kb because the drive has a data buffer this size and increasing it to 64Kb did not alter the performance. The removable cartridge is 5.25", formats to 84.6 Meg (FFS) and has a write protect notch which is visible even when the cartridge is mounted in the drive. HDToolbox was used to Prep and Partition the cartridge. My cartridge came supplied with free software on it, valued at $599, unfortunately in Macintosh format. Overall, I think this unit is excellent value, there is no limit to the amount of hard disk storage, except for the limit of your wallet. The design appears to be robust and even the cartridges do not seem fragile, despite some advertisements suggesting a dropped cartridge is a broken cartridge. Cooling fan noise has always been an issue, but as I write I cannot notice any increase in noise over and above the hum of my computer. Generally I try to buy Australian made products if their up to scratch, but this was not a consideration when purchasing this drive. You can imagine my surprise when I turned to the introduction of the manual and found "Thank you for buying a hard drive, designed in Australia ..." (Cutting Edge Technologies (Aust) Pty Ltd). PS - For those interested in SCSI and SCSI-2, the manuals supplied with this drive give a great description of these interfaces and explain "reselection". A topic for my next article perhaps ... */ Mountlist entry for SyQuest drive /* DH3: Device = scsi.device Priority = 10 Unit = 1 Flags = 0 Surfaces = 1 BlocksPerTrack = 64 Reserved = 2 PreAlloc = 0 Interleave = 0 LowCyl = 2; HighCyl = 2709 BufMemType = 5 Buffers = 500 Mount = 1 MaxTransfer = 32768 BootPri = -128 DosType = 0x444F5301 #  ¿? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿*? 35 ¿?