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Turbo IDE Card
====================================================================
This is a description of the Turbo IDE Card as it recently was published on
a
flyer at KansasFest 1992. Some additional information included.
Copyright 1992 ///SHH Systeme, Joachim Lange.
Feel free to distribute this text as you like as long as it remains
unchanged.
Questions, comments and suggestions welcome.
====================================================================
///SHH Systeme "We make IDE Hard Drives RAMFast !!"
"We make Vulcan Hard Drives RAMFast
!!"
Dipl. Ing. Joachim Lange
Schoenstrasse 80a
8000 Muenchen 90
Germany
Phone: 49 + 89 + 6515150 (19.00 to 23.00 CET)
GEnie: J.LANGE7
====================================================================
Introducing:
///Turbo IDE Card
==================
- 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:
Acesses are 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 KBytes/sec.
- Up to 300 KBytes/sec 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-initialitation 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 Engineering, CV-Tech,
Harris, Q-Labs etc.
- The Turbo IDE Card supports 8 (eight) MBytes of expansion RAM on the
IIGS.
- Supports two hard drives up to 256 MBytes capacity each (up to 4 GByte if
desired).
- Up to eight partitions on one drive, 16 partitions on two drives, 32
MBytes
per partition (up to 256 MBytes per partition if used with Macintosh HFS
FSTs).
- Can boot from any partition (press OA-1 ... OA-9, OA-A ... OA-G or set
up
default value in configuration program).
- 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.
- Under PRODOS 8, the upper partitions (3...8) can be mapped into other
slots.
- 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 restrictions
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 (most other controllers need an extra cable).
- Made in Germany.
- Industry Standard Quality.
- One year warranty.
- Free software updates (Utilities and ROM) available on GEnie.
Vulcan & Vulcan Gold Controller Replacement:
============================================
--> Now your Vulcan can be RAMFast!! <--
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 Hard Drive will be RAMFast
without ever buying a RamFAST SCSI Card. Once again, your Vulcan Hard Drive
can be as fast or faster than a SCSI drive connected to 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). He even could
replace his old, low capacity drive in the Vulcan case with an up-to-date,
120 MB or 200 MB drive and really save a lot of money. Any 3.5 inch IDE
drive
will fit in the Vulcan case with no problems.
Note 1: Some of the older 20 MB and 40 MB Vulcan drives (maybe more) are
not
fully compatible with the IDE Standard. Contact Applied Engineering about
the
drive type they have built in. The Turbo IDE Card requires full
compatibility
with the IDE Standard. Soon there will be a program available on GEnie that
will check your Vulcan drive for compatibility. Look for the file
CHECK.VULCAN.
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 with various hard
drives
(Apple IIGS at 2.8 MHz, GS/OS System 6.0, using ProSel-16, Statistics on
Disc
Access, Linear Read):
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 3000: 1.1 msec/block (Vulcan Gold 40)
Conner CP 30084: 0.91 msec/block
Conner CP 30104: 0.79 msec/block
Conner CP 30174: 0.75 msec/block
Conner CP 30204: 0.75 msec/block
We do recommend Conner IDE Drives (although we do not get money for that
note). They are reliable, fast, quiet, inexpensive and they are the leader
in
low power consumption.
///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 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 SmartPort
protocol (standard & extended calls) and is well speed-optimized. As a
result, the boot time for launching GS/OS is only two seconds more when the
GS/OS driver is not installed.
- As mentioned before, the Turbo IDE Card software supports any number of
sectors per track, number of heads and number of cylinders. At this time,
the
math routines are limited to reasonable 256 MBytes per drive (we can change
that limitation). 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 data, or
the
directory contents in the SCSI cache is overwritten by the actual data
(cache
splitting required). So the SCSI card has to re-read some directory blocks
from hard disk again and again 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 loosing directory
blocks in the cache is mainly annoying when a hard disk partition gets
filled
up more and more. A nearly empty partition never shows this problem.
By contrast, GS/OS playing with the Turbo IDE Card, has most directory
and
index blocks available in the GS/OS cache at any time without the need of
hard drive accesses.
- Why is the Turbo IDE Card really fast? Because it has no cache!
Indeed, a hard-caching controller has to transfer data twice which may
result in a considerable overhead. On a read request, the data first has to
be read into the cache and then transferred to the destination memory.
There
is no way to get around the cache.
The Turbo IDE Card transfers data directly from the hard disk to the
destination, as fast as it can be done on Apple II computers.
Ordering Information
=====================
The Turbo IDE Card is immediately available! And we will ship immediately!
The Turbo IDE Card carries a one year limited warranty against defects in
materials and workmanship. Software and ROM updates (if needed) will be
available on GEnie BBS.
The Turbo IDE Card package consists of
- the controller card
- an IDE cable
- the installation disk with GS/OS driver
- the manual (english)
The current single-order price is
US $159 plus $28 for shipping and handling.
Shipping is via standard air mail. (if you think the shipping charge is too
high, just call any US mail order house and ask what they charge for
international air mail shipping). Discounts are as follows:
Quantity price each shipping & handling
3 $155 $32
5 $150 $36
10 $145 $44
All ordersmust be prepaid in US currency or Deutsche Mark. Cash (bills),
certified checks (accepted by a german bank) and international remittances
accepted. Sorry, no credit cards accepted. Dealer inquiries welcome. As the
Dollar exchange rates are changing from day to day, the pricing may not be
stable for a long time. Try to get latest US$ pricing for the Turbo IDE
Card
on GEnie BBS.
In your order please specify computer (IIe or IIGS).
We are offering manufacturing licenses. Ask for details.
SHH Systeme 8/92 "We make IDE Hard Drives RAMFast !!"
"We make Vulcan Hard Drives RAMFast !!"
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I hope this is pretty recent info. I just DL it from a FV/Metal net site.
----------------------------------
Bruce Banfield Internet: tang@pro-newton.cts.com
AOL: Tang IIgs
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