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Turbo IDE Card description
==========================================================================
Version 1.1 / 2.11.92
- shipping charges changed
- some more hard drive speed tests (Vulcan included)
- account # for payment
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Version 1.0 / September 92
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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
(the checksum is 8D@!;/SAR_:'`[\-~=JS/S).
Questions, comments and suggestions welcome.
The Turbo IDE Card is no vaporware, many people have seen this card on
KansasFest '92, including the guys from AE, QC, ECON, Interplay, DreamWorld,
Procyon, LRO, AllTech, TMS ...
.... and it's available, now!
==========================================================================
///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 0.7 msec/block for linear reads (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 (the Apple
High-Speed SCSI card has 50 KBytes/sec in DMA mode).
- 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 inter-
faces! 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 with 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. So you can get access to all partitions even under PRODOS 8. Mapping
can easily be disabled for use with PRODOS 2.01. *No* patch software
required. No ROM upgrade required.
Easy installation:
- 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 High Quality.
- One year warranty.
- Free software updates (Utilities and ROM) available via GEnie.
Vulcan & Vulcan Gold Controller Replacement:
============================================
--> Now your Vulcan can be RAMFast!! <--
Disappointed about the Vulcan Gold upgrade? Still a (golden) slow poke?
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!
Super fast!!
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: 0.80 msec/block
Seagate ST3120: 0.80 msec/block
Seagate ST3144: 0.80 msec/block
Seagate ST3283: 0.75 msec/block
Conner CP 3000: 1.1 msec/block (Vulcan Gold 40)
Conner CP 3044: 1.1 msec/block
Conner CP 30084: 0.88 msec/block
Conner CP 30104: 0.78 msec/block
Conner CP 30174: 0.70 msec/block
Conner CP 3204: 0.75 msec/block
Conner CP 30204: 0.70 msec/block
NEC D3735: 0.90 msec/block
NEC D3765: 0.80 msec/block
And now, the measurement of the ultra-fast
Vulcan 40: 4.70 msec/block (4.7, wow!!!)
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 is very
useful for fine-tuning.
- Support for special multiple read/write mode.
- 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!
Yes, there is still a big advantage compared with a hard-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 working hard 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
=====================
This is no vaporware! The Turbo IDE Card is immediately available! And we are
shipping 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
- the IDE cable
- the installation disk with GS/OS caching driver
- the manual (english)
The current (Nov.'92) single-order price is
US $159 plus $24 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
2 $159 $26
3 $155 $28
5 $150 $32
10 $145 $40
All orders must be prepaid in US currency or Deutsche Mark. Cash (bills),
certified checks (accepted by a german bank) and international remittances
accepted. Sorry, no credit cards accepted. Dealer inquiries welcome. As the
Dollar exchange rates are changing from day to day, the pricing may not be
stable for a long time. Try to get latest US$ pricing for the Turbo IDE Card
on GEnie.
Remittances send to:
Citybank Privatkunden AG Duesseldorf, Germany
Account No. 5 045 090 092,
Joachim Lange, Schoenstrasse 80a, 8000 Muenchen 90
In your order please specify computer (IIe or IIGS).
We are offering manufacturing licenses. Ask for details.
SHH Systeme, 11/92 "We make IDE Hard Drives RAMFast !!"
"We make Vulcan Hard Drives RAMFast !!"
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-- End of Turbo IDE description --
--
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