From: behrenss@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Soenke Behrens)
Subject: IDE Card Ref (repost as per request)
Organization: Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 16:03:01 GMT

I apologize to the world at large for reposting this, but some ppl
seem to have been unhappy with the formatting and length. Well,
no problem, here we go again :)

===================

!--------------------------------------------------------------------
This is a short(?) description of the Turbo IDE Card as it recently
was published on a flyer at KansasFest 1992. Some additional infor-
mation included.

Copyright 1992 Joachim Lange

Feel free to distribute this text as you like as long as it remains
unchanged.

Questions, comments and suggestions welcome. Send to:
behrenss@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Soenke Behrens)

Replies will be sent out in september.

SHH SYSTEME
Dipl. Ing. Joachim Lange
Schoenstrasse 80a
8000 Muenchen  90
Germany

Phone:   (intnl. area code) + 49 + 89 + 6515150
                              ^    ^    ^
                              !    !    !
                         Germany   !    !
                                   !    !
                             Muenchen   !
                                        !
                SHH Systeme, Joachim Lange

!****************************************************************!
!              "We make IDE Hard Drives RAMFast !!"              !
!            "We make Vulcan Hard Drives RAMFast !!"             !
!****************************************************************!

   End of header
!--------------------------------------------------------------------


///Turbo IDE Card Features
==========================

- The Turbo IDE Card is a High-Speed DMA Hard Disk Controller for
  the Apple IIGS and Apple IIe.

- Allows the use of the inexpensive and popular IDE hard drives with
  Apple II computers.

- Fully PRODOS and GS/OS compatible.

- Uses High-Speed DMA in Apple IIGS and Apple IIe.

- Offers highest data transfer rate: as low as 0.8 msec/Block for
  linear read (using ProSel-16, Statistics on Disc Access). Many
  large-capacity drives offer even higher speed.

- Speed test: A real-world GS/OS-verify delivers more than 600
  KByte/s.

- Up to 300 KByte/s data transfer rate under PRODOS 8.

- Boots a minimum GS/OS System in nine seconds, with accelerator in
  six seconds.

- Boots PRODOS 8 in less than one second.

- Wastes no time for self-initialisation compared to standard SCSI
  interfaces! Gives a very short warm-up time.

- High-speed GS/OS driver with GS/OS-caching support included (Note:
  RAMFast SCSI controllers do not support GS/OS caching).

- Fully compatible with all DMA-capable hardware such as: ZIP GSX,
  Transwarp GS, PC Transporter, RAM Cards from Apple, Applied Engi-
  neering, CV-Tech, Harris, Q-Labs etc.

- Supports two drives up to 256 MBytes capacity each.

- Up to eight partitions on one drive, 16 partitions on two drives,
  32 MBytes per partition (up to 256 MBytes if used with Macintosh
  HFS FSTs).

- Can boot from any partition.

- The DMA feature can be disabled by software to be compatible with
  non-DMA-capable hardware as the ZIP Chip, the original Transwarp
  and some IIGS memory expansion cards.

- The Turbo IDE Card supports 8 (eight) MBytes of RAM expansion on
  the IIGS.

- Under PRODOS 8, the upper partitions (3...8) can be mapped into
  other slots.

- Semi-automatic installation procedure with auto-recognition of the
  hard drive's geometry and with auto-partitioning.

- All types of IDE hard disk drives can be used. There are no restric-
  tions in the number of sectors per track, number of heads or number
  of cylinders. The Turbo IDE Card Software supports any combination
  of numbers that may exist.

- Hard disk cable included (other controllers need an extra cable).

- One year warranty.



Vulcan & Vulcan Gold Controller Replacement
============================================


What about a Vulcan Platinum?  Here it is !!

  The Turbo IDE Card is the ultimate Speedup Kit for Vulcan Hard
  Drives. It

--->      doubles the speed of the       <---
--->  fastest Vulcan Gold configuration  <---

   Indeed, using the Turbo IDE Card, your Vulcan will be RAMFast
without ever buying a RamFAST SCSI Card.

  The Turbo IDE Card is *** fully pin-compatible *** with Vulcan
hard drives. A Vulcan user can easily switch over to the Turbo IDE
Card and has the option of upgrading his system with a second hard
drive (external). You could even replace your old, low capacity drive
in your Vulcan case with an up-to-date, 120 or 200 MB drive and real-
ly save a lot of money.

Note 1: Some of the older 20 MB and 40 MB Vulcan drives are not fully
compatible with the IDE standard. Contact AE about the drive type they
have built in. The Turbo IDE Card requires full compatibility with
the IDE standard.

Note 2: In InCider 7/92, p. 40,  you can get some speed test results
for Vulcan Gold, ZipDrive, ECON PEGASUS and TMS SHADOW. Well, just
have a look at the "Linear Read"  and  "GS/OS Verify"... These are
the numbers that really count !

Here are some test results for the Turbo IDE Card (Apple IIGS at
2.8 MHz, GS/OS System 6.0, using ProSel-16, Statistics on Disc Ac-
cess, Linear Read) connected to

Seagate ST3102:     0.8 msec/block
Seagate ST3120:     0.8 msec/block
Seagate ST3144:     0.8 msec/block
Seagate ST3283:     0.75 msec/block

Conner CP 3004:     1.1 msec/block     (Vulcan Gold 40)
Conner CP 30084:     0.91 msec/block
Conner CP 30104:     0.79  msec/block
Conner CP 30204:     0.75 msec/block





///Turbo IDE Card - Technical Details
======================================

- The built-in DMA sequencer transfers 512 bytes of data in one
  burst. One block of 512 bytes is transferred in 512 microseconds
  without any overhead. This is the maximum I/O speed available in
  Apple II computers. The Turbo IDE Card has no need for an extra
  10 MHz processor to make hard drives RamFAST.

- The DMA is very efficient and easy to program, simply by reading
  or writing five 8-bit-registers (DMA bank, DMA address low/high,
  DMA read/write mode and DMA start).

- The DMA channel can alternatively be accessed through a 16-bit data
  port for non-DMA-modes and diagnostic purposes.

- All IDE task file registers are available in the Apple slot I/O area.

- Four banks of 2 KByte firmware EPROM and four banks of 512 byte
  scratch RAM are available.

- The Turbo IDE Card was developed according to Apple's Interface
  Card Design and DMA Design Guidelines.

- The Turbo IDE Card firmware supports the PRODOS 8 and the Smart-
  Port protocol (standard & extended calls) and is well speed-opti-
  mized. As a result, the boot time for launching GS/OS is only two
  seconds longer when the GS/OS driver is not installed.

- As mentioned before, the Turbo IDE Card software supports any num-
  ber of sectors per track, number of heads and number of cylinders.
  At this time, the math routines (they have to do a lot of dividing)
  are limited to a reasonable 256 MBytes per drive. The fast math
  routines are working universally in the range of the values allowed
  in the IDE task file (17...254 sectors, 2...16 heads and up to 65535
  cylinders). Most IDE drives are limited to 50...60 sectors, 16 heads
  and 1024 cylinders.

- Support for Universal Translation Mode: The installation program will
  set the hard disk(s) to any Translation Mode at user's request. This
  may be useful for some fine-tuning.

- The Turbo IDE Card will support upcoming tape streamers for the
  IDE interface.

- RamFAST SCSI Cards do not support GS/OS caching! Turbo IDE Cards do!
  There is still a big advantage compared with a caching SCSI card.
  When copying a large quantity of files to a hard disk partition,
  the Turbo IDE Card (supporting GS/OS caching) is very, very fast.
  A caching SCSI card, which does not support GS/OS caching, "looses"
  the directory and index blocks in its cache because the cache is
  never large enough to hold all the data, or the directory con-
  tents in the SCSI cache are overwritten by the actual data (cache
  splitting would be required to prevent that). So the SCSI card has
  to re-read some directory blocks from hard disk whenever they are
  requested by GS/OS. This results in a remarkable slow-down in
  overall speed because of the many seeks that have to be done. You
  can hear the noise of the SCSI drive when it is moving its read/
  write heads permanently. The problem of "losing" directory blocks
  in the cache is really annoying when a hard disk partition gets
  filled up more and more. A nearly empty partition never shows
  this problem.

  By contrast, GS/OS running with the Turbo IDE Card has most direc-
  tory and index blocks available in the GS/OS cache at any time
  without the need to do hard drive accesses.

(Ordering information is in a separate posting, as per request)
-- 
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electricity. I need it for my dreams.      !    tu-muenchen.de
(RACTER)                                   !  FIDO: 2:246/13 Soenke Behrens