From: sjjohnst@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Stephen Johnston)
Subject: Re: Future Amiga chipsets
Followup-To:  Mark Barretts ridiculous claims
Summary: Mark thinks you can't use normal IDE drives on an A4000 IDE controller
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 09:47:34 GMT

In article <BzBzGq.J3w@news.iastate.edu> barrett@iastate.edu (Marc N. Barrett) writes:
>>Marc, a couple of things here.  Currently IBM compatible systems >$1500
>>are loaded with IDE so, what does that say about your justification of the
>>$1500 cutoff.  Totally baseless if you need to ask.  
>
>   Hardly.  IBM clones are a special case.  Most of the hardware that you
>would hang off a SCSI bus is available in PC-specific versions, so there
>are fewer penalties for a PC having IDE rather than SCSI.  There are fewer
>tape drives, CD-ROM drives, etc.. available in Amiga-specific or Mac-
>specific versions, so that Amigas and Macs are forced to standardize on
>SCSI.  It works well enough in the Mac world, as all Macs have SCSI.  But
>when Commodore put IDE into the A4000, it cut substantially the number of
>options available to A4000 owners for expanding their Amigas.
>
How about buy an IDE drive that's advertised in PC magazines?  An IDE drive
is an IDE drive.  It is not IBM specific.  And since there are more IDE
drives for sale in computer magazines than there are SCSI drives, AND IDE
drives are CHEAPER, this would indicate that "when Commodore put IDE into
the A4000, it INCREASED substantially the number of options available to
A4000 owners for expanding their Amigas."

And were on earth do you find an Amiga specific, or even a Macintosh specific
drive?  And why would you want one?  If you own a Macintosh, you buy a SCSI
drive.  Simple.  If you own an Amiga, you buy a SCSI drive, or an IDE drive,
whichever controller you own.  Or you buy a controller too, your choice.  The
idea of standards like IDE and SCSI is that it doesn't matter what computer
you use.  Do you have an Amiga specific joystick attached to your gameport?
How about that printer that only plugs into the Commodore parallel port?

Think before making ludicrous statements...

>>I'll take a stand and say that C= did the right thing.  Considering what an
>>IDE controller costs, after talking to a friend who sells IBM compatibles,
>>and what a SCSI I controller costs, that would bring up the cost of the
>>A4000 a couple of hundred dollars more.
>
>   No it would not have.  Likely, the SCSI design that would have been used,
>had SCSI been inlcuded in the A4000, is the same design that is in the A3000.

We had a Commodore rep at school taking about the choice of IDE.  He wasn't
extremely happy about IDE either, but he did admit that from a price
viewpoint, it was the way to go.  IDE controllers are real cheap - about
$2 he said.  That's pretty cheap, and transfers into about $40 additional
cost to the user.  The SCSI controller costs Commodore about $40.  Which
would translate into about $200 to the purchaser.  That's $150 extra to
get a SCSI controller on the A4000, and you haven't even bought the drive
yet.  And SCSI drives are a little more expensive than IDE drives.  So it
wasn't a R&D decision that put IDE on the A4000, it was price.  Commodore
realized that most people don't have more than one or two hard drives any-
way, so the advantages of SCSI are normally wasted.  And if you want to use
SCSI on the Amiga 4000, you can buy a SCSI-I controller TODAY for as cheap
as $99.95 (Creative computers - Advantage 2000 SCSI controller) which will
work just the same as the SCSI in your Amiga 3000.  And is cheaper than
letting Commodore do it. :-)

>   Hardly.  If Commodore had included SCSI as standard hardware, most people
>would have been happy with it and would not have bothered to upgrade to 
>SCSI II.  Real SCSI II hard drives are EXPENSIVE, and there are no SCSI II
>tape drives or SCSI II CD-ROM drives or SCSI II floptical drives.  The only
>real major advantage of SCSI II over SCSI is the increased performance with a
>small number of SCSI II hard drives. 
>
But again, most people only have one or two hard disk drives, which works
just fine with a single SCSI controller.

>   In other words, going from IDE to SCSI II will cost far more people less
>money than going from SCSI to SCSI II.  A lot of people will be purchasing
>this SCSI II card not to get the increased performance that it provides only
>with expensive SCSI II hard drives, but to get the flexibility that SCSI 
>would have provided.  Lots of people will be buying the A3090 SCSI II card and
>hanging tape drives, floptical drives, CD-ROM drives, or slower SCSI hard
>drives off of it.  Senseless.
>
Then you buy a SCSI-I controller - available today.

>---
>| Marc Barrett -MB-  |  email: barrett@iastate.edu
>--------------------------------------------------
>
I guess you haven't listened to other people's suggestion that you sell your
Amiga and buy a PC.  Why don't you buy a Mac then?  You'd be able to take that
SCSI drive out of your A3000 and plug it into the Mac no problem... :-)

-- 
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