Amiga ISO Collection/AmigaDemoCD2.iso/ASCII/TEXTE/c.s.a.reviews/hardware/storage/InsiteFloptical-I325VM

Internet Message Format | 1994-06-02 | 10.4 KB

Path: news.uh.edu!barrett
From: [e-mail] (Allan G. Lawrie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews
Subject: REVIEW: Insite Floptical Drive I325VM
Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Date: 31 Mar 1994 16:40:25 GMT
Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett
Lines: 244
Sender: [e-mail] (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator)
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <2neudp$[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Allan G. Lawrie)
NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu
Keywords: hardware, storage, floptical, SCSI, commercial
Originator: [e-mail]


PRODUCT NAME

    Insite Floptical Drive I325VM

    [MODERATOR'S NOTE:  This review was updated on May 23 and 29, 1994.
    Search for the text "[UPDATE:" to find updated information.  -Dan]


BRIEF DESCRIPTION

    This is a 3.5 inch SCSI floppy drive which uses a combination of
magnetic recording and laser tracking to store 21 MB on a floppy disk.  It
is a cheap alternative to optical drives.

    [UPDATE:  "It also reads and writes 720K and 1.44MB IBM formats."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    - Dan]


AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION

    Name:        Insite Peripherals
    Address:    (Apparently they have moved.)
            USA

    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]

    Name:        MELCO Sales (NZ) Ltd.
    Address:    1 Parliament St,
            Lower Hutt,
            New Zealand
    Telephone:    [phone]
    FAX:        [phone]


LIST PRICE

    $1100.00(NZ) is the approximate price for a Floptical kit.

    $825.00(NZ) is what I paid for a bare drive.

    $42.75(NZ) per 21 meg disk is the best I have found.

    All prices are in New Zealand dollars and include GST.
    Estimated prices in US dollars are half those shown above.


SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

    HARDWARE

        Amiga SCSI controller.
        Large to small power plug adaptor.
        Optional: 3 1/2 mounting kit.

    SOFTWARE

        Insite drive unlock utility.(Available on aminet)
        Hard drive formating software.
        Workbench 1.3 minimum. (1.3 and 2.1 tested)


MACHINE USED FOR TESTING

    Amiga 2000, 1MB Chip RAM, 2MB Fast RAM.
    ECS Agnus chip.  OCS Denise chip.
    Commodore 2091 SCSI controller.
    Xetec FastTrack SCSI controller.
    AmigaDOS 1.3 / 2.1


INSTALLATION

    The Floptical drive will install in any 3 1/2 inch bay, but its
faceplate is standard PC size.

    Installation is the same as a hard drive with the following
exceptions:

    1. The drive is protected by a thin tin cover, so some care is
       necessary.

    2. The power plug is smaller than standard, and an adaptor is
       required.

    3. As it uses floppy disks, there has to be external access to the
       front panel.

    4. Insert the "insite" command early in the startup-sequence, but
       after "Binddrivers" and any other hard drive initialising
       software.

    [UPDATE:  "Important note:  You want the Insite command IMMEDIATELY
    after the Binddrivers command.  If your floptical is not validated,
    the disk validator will attempt to validate it and write to the
    disk.  It will not be able to write unless you have already executed
    the Insite command for that drive."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    - Dan]

    As I received a bare drive, the SCSI address jumpering was a
hit-and-miss affair. I settled on address 4 after some experimentation.


REVIEW

    The first noticeable thing when booting with a Floptical is the time
it takes for the drive to check a disk.  It goes "clunk-clonk" and whirs a
bit, reminiscent of a sick floppy drive.  Both controllers take a bit of time
to notice the drive when booting as it doesn't respond for about 10-15
seconds.  This may cause problems with other controllers.

    [UPDATE:  "The newer Insite drives take about half the time older
    ones do.  They changed the ROM in the drive.  It is available from
    Insite directly."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    - Dan]

    Before you can do ANY writing to the drive, a utility is needed to
send a "write sense enable" to the drive.  Even low-level formatting cannot
be done without this utility.  There are two available on Aminet, the best
being "insite" (filename: insite.lha).  There is another called "scsi", and
they both do the job.  The command should be inserted in your
startup-sequence AFTER Binddrivers and any other controller enabling
commands.  (For example, "Touchall" for Xetec controllers.)

    HDTools has no problem with the floptical AFTER the "insite" utility
is run.  Low-level formatting takes about 20 minutes, and AmigaDOS format is
about the same, accompanied by a bit of clunking.  In the end, the disk has
19 Meg of usable space.

    [UPDATE:  "The first time you run HDToolBox after adding the drive,
    you will have to READ CONFIGURATION, then run the Insite command
    before doing a SAVE.  After that, if you leave a 20 MB diskette in
    the drive at boot time, it will be automatically recognized."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    - Dan]

    The disk acts just like a hard drive, with the exception of the
write protect tab. This is the same as a floppy (on the opposite corner of
the disk) and can be used to protect the disk from ALL writing.  Write
protected flopticals can be booted from on a virus-infected system or if
something is trashing partitions (e.g., possibly some of the bugs in certain
UNIX versions).

    Under AmigaDOS 1.3, the DiskChange command must be run several times
when changing a disk.

    [UPDATE:  "Actually, you only need to do it once.  Just wait for the
    drive to stop being accessed and then do the DiskChange command."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    The review author, Allan Lawrie, disagrees and still stands behind
    his statement that several DiskChange commands are necessary.
    - Dan]

This isn't necessary for AmigaDOS 2.0 and higher because the computer polls
the drive every 5 seconds:  similar to the floppy interface, but without the
annoying click.  The disk icon disappears and reappears in an orderly
fashion.  If there is no disk in the drive when booting AmigaDOS 1.3, there
will be a long delay until the controller times-out waiting for a response
from the floptical drive.  This is very obvious with the 2091 SCSI
controller.

    Disk changes sometimes require a reboot to take effect.  If the new
disk has exactly the same partitioning as the old one, then disks can be
changed without rebooting.  Of course, this is not a problem if all your
disks have only one partition.

    MessyDOS and CrossDOS can be used to read 1.44 MB PC disks.  This
requires a Mountlist entry and the appropriate software.  It can be done.  I
have not been able to format PC disks using a floptical though.


DOCUMENTATION

    I received a bare drive with NO documentation.  There are kits
available with all of this, which takes the guess-work out of the address
jumpering.  It's a SCSI device, so it shouldn't NEED much documentation.


LIKES AND DISLIKES

    LIKES

    1. The ability to store a reasonable amount of data with random
       access is what makes this product for me.  I have 40 Meg of
       archive files stored away and duplicated on 4 disks.

    2. Workbench fits on ONE disk. In fact several versions fit on one
       disk.

    3. Another aspect is disaster recovery.  All my important partitions
       are stored on a disk which I can boot from if the hard drive is
       killed.  The hard drive can be reformatted/partitioned (or
       replaced) and all the data transferred back.

    4. This could also be handy for UNIX users who could have a cut down
       system on 1 disk.  Rogue software can't blow away a write
       protected floptical disk!

    DISLIKES

    1. Initially the noise made by the drive was not to my liking.  I'm
       used to it now.

    2. The price of the disks!  Initially I was charged $80 (NZ) each.
       Since then I have found a source for 3M Floptical disks at the
       price mentioned in the LIST PRICE section, above.

    DESIRED IMPROVEMENTS

    1. Better Amiga support.

    2. BIGGER disks.

    3. A standard for the jumpers included in SCSI specifications, as
       this would make ANY drive simple to install.


BUGS

    The drive requires a utility to enable writing.  See above.

    [UPDATE:  "NOT A BUG!  This is an agreed-upon standard.  The drive
    functions were standardized and licensed to other manufacturers.
    The reason the drive powers up in a write-protected state is that in
    IBM PC's, the power-up can generate odd things and may cause a write
    to occur before the driver is ready.  This is to prevent it.  All
    IBM controllers automatically do what my Insite command does.  The
    Amiga comes up in a very controlled state(due to AutoConfig), and
    the controller designers never realized that they were not doing
    everything they should be."
    Thanks to [e-mail] (Anthony Preston) for this update.
    - Dan]


VENDOR SUPPORT

    For me this was MELCO Sales (Mitsubishi ELectric COmpany).  They were
very helpful and replaced the whole drive when I told them that it wouldn't
write.  Later on they replaced a disk after I had messed it up so bad that NO
controller could make sense of it. (The disk later formatted OK on one of
MELCO's PC's.)

    Their technicians know a lot about the drives and are able to repair
them. They will clean the drives too, as this can not be done buy the user.


WARNING!!!

    DO NOT CLEAN THE DRIVE WITH A CLEANING DISK.

    The drive will require less cleaning (and expense) if ONLY floptical
disks are used.


WARRANTY

    12 months.  This will probably vary.


CONCLUSIONS

    Apart from the fact that nobody from Commodore/MELCO/Insite was able
to give specific help for an Amiga setup, I really like this product.

    The drive has performed flawlessly since I have been using it.  To
date I have had NO faulty blocks on any disks, including those with games on
them.  Games disks have received a reasonable thrashing for over a year!

    The physical write protection can be used in the case of viruses and
experimental software to keep a reference disk free from interference. This
reference disk can even booted from while still write-protected.

    The Floptical beats a tape for access and convenience, but storage is
now small in comparison to other media (CD-ROM, DAT tape, and large hard
drives).


COPYRIGHT NOTICE

    This file is freely distributable as long as it remains unmodified
and is not used for profit making purposes.

---

   Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews
   Send reviews to:    [e-mail]
   Request information:    [e-mail]
   Moderator mail:    [e-mail]
   Anonymous ftp site:  math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews