Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: olk@johann.nbg.sub.org (Oliver Knorr) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Guru-ROM V6 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 20 May 1995 05:21:17 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 298 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3pju8d$4lg@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: olk@johann.nbg.sub.org (Oliver Knorr) NNTP-Posting-Host: dino.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, SCSI, GVP, ROM, commercial Originator: barrett@dino.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Guru-ROM V6 BRIEF DESCRIPTION The "Guru-ROM V6" package is an upgrade for most Amiga SCSI host adapters manufactured by GVP. It consists of a new driver ROM on a small adapter board, an installation disk and a manual. This review is based on the German version of the product; an English one is available, too. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Stefan Ossowskis Schatztruhe Address: Veronikastrasse 33 D-45131 Essen Germany Telephone: +49 (2 01) 78 87 78 FAX: +49 (2 01) 79 84 47 E-mail: stefano@tchest.e.eunet.de LIST PRICE DM 99.00, currently about $70 (US), plus shipping. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An Amiga computer with one or more SCSI devices attached to a Series-II type host adapter from GVP. This includes the "G-Force", "Combo" and A530 turbo boards and the A500, A1200 and Zorro-II host adapters (with or without RAM expansion, including the 4008). The upgrade is not suitable for the A1291 daughterboard and the (very old) Series-I host adapters. SOFTWARE Like for all proper Amiga SCSI driver ROMs, Kickstart 1.3 or newer is required. Because of several enhancements in the system software that might be relevant for owners of hard disks or other SCSI devices, I would advise to install AmigaOS 3.1. COPY PROTECTION The installation disk and manual are not copy protected. As there is no need to copy the hardware, I did not check if it is protected in any way. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 2000, 1 MB Chip RAM, AmigaOS 3.1 A2630 accelerator board with 4 MB Fast RAM GVP Series-II Zorro-II SCSI host adapter without RAM option bsc Memory Master Zorro-II RAM expansion with 4 MB Fast RAM SCSI DEVICES USED FOR TESTING Quantum LPS340S hard drive Quantum LPS105S hard drives (two different revisions) Apple CD-300 / Sony CDU-8003A CD-ROM drive Toshiba XM-3501 CD-ROM drive Insite I325VM Floptical disk drive HARDWARE INSTALLATION To install the adapter board with the new ROM chip, you have to open your Amiga, remove the GVP card and locate the old ROM chip (which is always in a socket). Now you need to lever it out of the socket with a small screwdriver and insert the new adapter board in this place. Depending on your configuration, you might also need to change some jumper settings on the expansion board before you assemble your Amiga again. If you have more than one GVP SCSI expansion in your Amiga, you need only one Guru-ROM V6. The whole procedure is explained in detail in the manual, including some safety guidelines how to handle electronic devices properly. Opening your Amiga might void the warranty, and you should have some experience with assembling computer hardware for this installation, so you may want to have this done by your dealer. SOFTWARE INSTALLATION The most important piece of software, the driver, is located in the ROM chip, so there is no further installation necessary. The utility and configuration software for advanced use on the installation disk can be used right from the disk or copied manually to your hard drive using Workbench or the Shell. The configuration of all your software that uses the SCSI driver directly has to be changed, because the new driver is called "omniscsi.device" instead of "gvpscsi.device". This affects for example DOSDrivers or Mountlist files, low-level disk utilities like HDToolBox or SCSI-direct software like CD-DA players. COMPATIBILITY The manual includes a "Statement of conformance with the ANSI standard X3.131-1986 (SCSI-1)" and says the driver ROM is fully compatible with CCS and SCSI-2, too. All relevant Amiga standards and programming guidelines I know of seem to be respected. For example, the driver is trackdisk.device and scsi.device compatible, does Autoboot and Automount and supports the Rigid Disk Block and SCSI-Direct standards. Even unusual (but sometimes very useful) optional features like TD_GETGEOMETRY, TD_ADDCHANGEINT/TD_REMCHANGEINT and TD_EJECT are implemented. Obviously a lot of effort has been put into this product to make it work with all possible hardware and software combinations. The ROM has special code for the different revisions of the SCSI chip used on the GVP hardware, so you should not need to replace that 33C93 chip for special configurations. For the A3000 and A4000, some of which have hardware bugs that may prevent DMA, the driver switches to a different transfer method. The manual contains instructions how to upgrade faulty A3000s and A4000s and switch the driver back to DMA mode to get best performance. Because some SCSI devices do not implement all options of the SCSI protocol correctly, the driver tries to boot in the most compatible way. Advanced SCSI options like parity checking or those that increase performance, synchronous transfer and disconnect/reselect, can be switched on for each SCSI device separately with a special utility. There are even several options to make the driver work with SCSI-related software that would normally fail because it does not follow Commodore's programming guidelines or makes wrong assumptions. All software and all SCSI hardware I tried worked fine, even without any special configuration. SPEED There is not much I can say about speed, because I did not have a SCSI device fast enough for a reasonable test. My fastest hard drive reached 1969 KB/s (measured with RSCP), which seems to be the limit of this drive, but not that of the Guru-ROM. I have seen reports on Usenet from people who reached values well over 3 MB/s, near the absolute hardware limit of the Zorro-II. The maximum speed you can reach depends heavily on your system configuration. As a rule of thumb, having RAM on the host adapter board will increase the performance, and having RAM not reachable via DMA by the host adapter (for example in the A4000) will decrease performance. The driver automatically selects the right transfer mode for your combination of Amiga hardware and SCSI devices, but of course its performance cannot exceed the limits your configuration imposes. To get the best results, you can tune your system with the supplied configuration utilities by switching on some optional features your hardware may support. Synchronous mode especially can give a remarkable speedup if you have a fast hard drive. When playing around with the settings, I was surprised to find out this might even be useful for slow devices like CD-ROM drives. Of course the transfer rate will not increase here, but with my Toshiba drive I managed to increase the free processor time during transfers, which gives a better overall system performance. DOCUMENTATION The Guru-ROM V6 comes (in the German version) with a printed booklet of sixty pages. It consists of four sections. The first one, called "user manual," describes how to install the product and explains all options of the configuration tools supplied on the disk. For many users, this might be all they need to read. The second section gives an extensive description of the driver's features and performance, the AmigaDOS and SCSI standards and options it supports, and much technical background information about SCSI and the Amiga. It also gives hints for optimizing your configuration, discusses compatibility questions and explains in detail the problems of the Amiga's internal serial port with Zorro-II DMA hardware and how to solve them. I was very pleased to find this section in the manual. It gives a lot of interesting and useful information for users with some technical background. The next chapter answers many frequently asked questions about GVP SCSI hardware and the driver. Most questions are about problems with specific hardware and software and configuration issues. It's probably a good idea to have a look at these sections if something seems to go wrong with SCSI. The fourth and last sections names the relevant original documentation about SCSI and the AmigaDOS and explains how to use the "A-Max-II" emulation software with GVP SCSI host adapters. In addition to the manual, there is also a "readme" file and documentation for some additional utilities on the installation disk. I could not find any detailed information about hardware issues like SCSI cabling, internal and external connection of devices, termination or termination power. Although such information might be beyond the scope of a driver's documentation, it would probably be a good idea to include it here. Knowledge about these things can't be expected from a normal Amiga user, and I found the description in the original GVP documentation very insufficient. LIKES I was most impressed by the large amount of configuration options and standards the driver supports and by the good manual. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS I dislike the fact that this product is currently only available for GVP SCSI hardware. I would love to be able to use this driver for the on-board SCSI host adapter of my A3000, too. As explained above, I would consider an introduction to SCSI hardware in the manual a good improvement of the product. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I have used several versions of the original GVP SCSI driver and Commodore's scsi.device and know about the characteristics of several other SCSI drivers for the Amiga. None of them reaches the Guru-ROM's combination of features, compatibility, conformance to SCSI specifications and Amiga programming guidelines, configuration options, and support for different hard- and software. BUGS I could not find any bug in this product. VENDOR SUPPORT For registered users who have sent back the postcard coming with the package completed with their name and address, support is provided through a fax number and a telephone hotline eight hours a day from Monday to Friday. Up to now, I had no need to use this service. To exchange defective disks or hardware and for bug reports or other complaints, the user may contact the manufacturer directly. Please note that I did some beta-testing of the Guru-ROM V6 and therefore received the product for free. You have to decide if that qualifies me as an especially good or especially bad review writer. I did not get any money and have no other association to this product. WARRANTY My German version of the manual does not mention any special warranty for the product and states that no guarantee is made that it is free of errors. Any liability for damages resulting from defects in the software is disclaimed. CONCLUSIONS Without doubt, I think this is an excellent product. It is not really cheap, but considering the fact that this is not just a driver update from GVP, but a rather complicated new product with special hardware, much documentation and new utilities, I think the price is justified. As I have nearly no idea how this product could still be improved, I rate it 5 stars out of 5. Anybody who is using a GVP SCSI host adapter and has problems with his current configuration or just wants to get the best performance and most features from his hardware, should consider this upgrade. COPYRIGHT NOTICE This review is freely distributable. - Oliver Knorr olk@johann.nbg.sub.org --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews