From: oneil@worf.arc.nasa.gov.arc.nasa.gov (Don O'Neil)
Subject: RE: SCSI & Accelerator
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 92 13:06:46 PST
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In response to the response to SCSI & Accelerator:

>That makes an investment of about $250-$400 for a 20-52 MB of HD storage;
>Since the speed of data retrieval is very high, wouldn't that put the RAMDisk
>enterprise out of business?  Who ould need a 180K, 256K, or even 1 MB RAM Disk
>with a 20 MB HD?

Truely, not many people would need the ram disk any longer, they are nearly
equal in speed (with the SCSI possibly being a little bit faster) but SCSI can 
be slower, if you use a older, slower drive, or faster if you use a newer faster
drive. SCSI will be more flexable, BUT will not offer the added flexibilty of
PROGRAM memory as the new 4000 RAM disks do (the 3000 is no longer avaiable) 
with RAMBO memory. The SCSI is the peripheral of the future.

>Oh, I think there is another factor-these prices are probably for bare drives.
>I suppose the drives will need an enclosure with power supply
>and a cooling fan, right?  That is another $100 or so, probably.
>Is the device, which already has a price, ready to use NOW?  How many HD's will
>it support, and is there a backup option of some sort (other than floppies
>or the TI program recorder  :-)?

True, they are prices for bare drives, but for a 3.5inch 20 MB hard drive,      
there isn't any problem with mounting inside the P-Box with a $5 mounting Kit,
of course you need to have 1/2 height floppy drives to do it with, but alot of
upgraters would allready have that. The device is not ready to use now, we have
done a production run, and pre-sale units were sold at the Chicago Faire for
those who wanted to be guaranteed first delivery (sold 24 units), and all 
new orders will be filled when the DSR has been completed by Jeff White and
Will McGovern. The device can support 8 SCSI Devices, HD's, Floppies, CD's,   
Tapes, etc.. and each HD can be up to 4 GIGABYTES in size. The Disk manager-
"UNI MANAGER" based on the late John Birdwell's "DISK 1" being completed by
Michael Maksimik will have FULL tape backup support for both SCSI and FLOPPY
drive (qic 40 & 80 tape drives) TAPE backup's as well as backup to your standard
floppy drives. The DM will support ALL KNOWN FDC's, the HFDC and SCSI cards so
it will be the ONE and only DM you will ever need. Backups can be partial, 
by file, by directory, or total disk, compressed or un-compressed. You can
even backup to another HD. It's a mouse/joystick/keyboard menu driven program
that will run on a 99/4a with 32k on up to a Geneve, with 80 col's and memory
adding more speed and screen display space.

>Given all the complications, did you nevertheless get a working accelerated
>console?  I mean, for somebody like you who does not mind high-level butchery
>of a console or two, has it been possible to get an accelerated console
>working?

We did get a console only accelerator working that ONLY ran BASIC, any cart or
the P-BOX being plugged in would cause it to crash. It was determined what was
necessary at that point to fix the problems, and that was when we decided to
cancel it. We cannot give any information about the design to anyone, so don't
ask.

>All this is wonderful.  It is nice that there are individuals willing to
>undertake this (especially since the 99/4A is the only home computer without
>a reliable HD; Atari, Commodore, Radio Shack users all have HD available for
>their machines.

With the combined experience of the person's involved on the SCSI project, the
system will provide you with a STABLE HD system for your TI, providing you 
follow all instructions in the manuals. We have provided you with a HIGH
quality card with lots of noise reduction to make things smooth, as well as
many features to keep the system up to date.

>Do you have an estimate of how many you would sell?

I am not sure how many new machines we would sell, if the machine was Geneve
compatible, maybe 500 or so, maybe more. I am not in it for the money, just for
the fun. Any product we introduce MUST pay for it's development costs by the
end of the sale of the 100th card/item. Pricing is based on that figure which
I believe is reasonable to expect. There are alot of "collectors" out there 
that would just buy it because it's new, but we DON'T rely on those sales.

>A few random ramblings and thoughts:
>My own main worry about those things has always been the loss of data in
>case of hardware breaks.  While IBM folks can always find some place to go
>if their controller dies, or even data retrieval services for dead HD's,
>we are left in the dark if something happens, with practically no 99'ers
>within a walking distance.  If something happens to such an exotic piece
>of hardware, it would be practically impossible to find a similarly-configured
>system in a reasonable amount of time.
>This scenario is not altogether a personal paranoia.  The trouble people
>had (and still have) with MYARC taking months and YEARS to fix the HFDC
>should teach us all an important lesson.
>I am not claiming that this is a reason NOT to buy the new hardware, but things
>are getting so exotic that somebody should think about a solution to the
>problem (perhaps an international TI UG for data recovery :-)

If you are paranoid about loosing data, then you could use a PC formated HD on
your TI, that way if it crashed, a regular data recovery place could recover
your TI data without any problems. Repairs can be done by myself, Bud Mills,
and Cecure, plus, all the chips are soceted on the board, and there are only
3 custom ones that can be ordered from myself. If I ever died or went under,
I would release the information to another party for re-creating
those custom chips. Myarc is an extreme case, I don't forsee that happening to
WHT or BMS. The same thing can be said about ANY piece of hardware for any
computer. What do you do if the company goes under? If you ever send in a
WHT product for repair, you will get a replacement unit (or the repaired item)
within a week or so, no longer than absolutely possible. There isn't much we
can do to avoid anything else.

>Can you use the same parallel cable for the Laser?  Do TI-Writer TL, @,&, ^
>etc. commands work or did you need to change your document files?

I use the same parallel cable as I did on my EPSON printer. MOST commands
(those you listed) will work, as they are standard formatting commands.
However, there are some cases when commands may not work, like if you had
special TL's described for double wide/high printing that the LJ does not
support, but the standard TI ones work fine. 

I believe you are being a little extreme in your worries and "knock downs" of
the TI bussiness. We have had well over 40 orders (the first ones shipped at
chicago) for the SCSI card just awaiting the DSR to be completed, when it is
we expect many many more from the input we have had so far. The SCSI card will
change the way people use there TI, and HOPEFULLY get them to use it more  
often. SCSI is the wisest way to go right now, all systems are migrating that
direction and so are we. WHT is trying to "revitalize" the TI market by bringin
out new USEFULL products for the average user, as well as tools for the 
student and hobbiest. I hope that we can suceed it this task and keep the 
spirit, ease of use, and flexibilty of the TI going through to the 21st 
century. Remember, I am not in this for the money, as long as I don't loose any
money, I'll continue producing new innovative products for the TI and       
compatibles.

Don O'Neil
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ti