Path: news.uh.edu!barrett From: rigby@cs.unr.edu (Wayne Rigby) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: AIR I3010HD internal high-density floppy drive for A3000 Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 13 Dec 1994 15:28:48 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 307 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3ckejg$ssl@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: rigby@cs.unr.edu (Wayne Rigby) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: hardware, floppy, high density, A3000, commercial Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME AIR I3010HD internal high-density floppy drive for the Amiga 3000 BRIEF DESCRIPTION This is a Chinon FZ-357A high density floppy drive (the same type Commodore used) packaged by AIR. It is meant to be used as an internal floppy drive on Commodore Amiga 3000 series computers. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Advanced Integration Research (AIR) Address: 3006 North Main Street Logan, Utah 84321 USA Telephone: (801) 753-4947 LIST PRICE I paid $139.95 (US) for each I3010HD. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS Requires at least AmigaDOS 2.1, i.e. Kickstart 2.04 or better and Workbench 2.1 or better. This product also requires an Amiga 3000. HARDWARE An Amiga 3000 computer. This drive probably could be mounted in an Amiga 3000T, 2000, 4000 or 4000T series computer, but you would have to provide your own mounting screws. A similar version is mentioned in the brochure for the 2000 series computers. SOFTWARE AmigaDOS 2.1 or better; i.e., Kickstart 2.04 or better and Workbench 2.1 or better. Works under AmigaDOS 3.1. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000-25, 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM Maxtor 120 MB internal hard drive Bernoulli The Box 150 removable media drive MultiFaceCard III serial and parallel card ZyXEL U-1496E 16.8 kbaud modem IDEK Iiyama MF-5021 multisync monitor Kickstart version 40.68 and Workbench version 40.42 And every possible combination of 2 AIR I3010HD 1.76 MB internal floppy drives and my original Chinon FB-354 880 kB internal floppy drive. INSTALLATION [MODERATOR'S NOTE: If you are not comfortable opening up your Amiga, then you should have the work done by an authorized Amiga service center. Opening your Amiga yourself may void your warranty, and careless work may even damage the machine. - Dan] Installation can be either easy or rather laborious. I highly suggest finding someone else to install these drives in your 3000, if you can find someone who is willing to go through the trouble. Do not forget to indicate to this person whether or not it is acceptable to cut away at the front of your Amiga's case. The so-called "easy" way, which is what I finally decided upon, is to leave the cover to your 3000 off, permanently. This is not suggested in many environments, as this leaves your computer open to anything that might fall its way, such as dust, a fumbled glass of water, a heavy brick, and so forth... all of which could possibly be quite harmful to your computer. And it also leaves your Amiga's internals bare and defenseless from the casual touch which may deliver a fatal static electricity discharge. I highly DO NOT suggest this way of installing these floppy drives. Over the next several months, I will be slowly installing the floppy drives the proper way until I can close my 3000's case. The laborious and somewhat difficult way of installing these floppy drives, which also happens to be the correct way, requires some good use of a metal file. The Chinon FZ-357A floppy drives in the AIR I3010HD package are not as tall as the standard FB-354 floppy drives in most A3000's. Actually, they are smaller in all dimensions than my original FB-354. This requires the use of four metal spacers and long screws (both provided by AIR in the package) to mount the floppy drive high enough to allow floppies to be inserted through the plastic case front and into the drive mechanism. However, these spacers are too tall. This requires, as stated in the basic and slightly scrambled instructions, taking a metal file to the spacers to file them down about 1/16th of an inch (approximately 1-2 millimeters). I tried using several washers stacked up instead of filing away slowly at the spacers. This worked great, except for the fact that I could not find any washers with a small enough circumference to fit in the spare mounting bracket in the 3000. This bracket is a U-shaped piece of metal. The sides of the U go around the edges of the floppy drive. It is tight enough that I would guess that I really do not need any screws to hold it in place, except for the height problem. Unfortunately, the screw holes on the floppy drive are so close to the edges that none of the hardware stores in my area carried washers that would fit with room enough to allow the screws to go through their centers and into the floppy. At this point, one can finally push a floppy through a closed 3000's case and have it easily insert and eject from the drive. Now, however, there is a new problem not mentioned in the slim instructions. Once the floppy drive is at the right height, the eject button no longer fits through the 3000 case's eject button slot. The eject button on the AIR I3010HD floppy drive is not the nice, contoured and wide button on stock Amiga 3000 floppy drives. Rather, it is the standard straight and fat eject button. This button ends up having its right edge just a little beyond the right edge of the eject button slot. Its left edge is less than half way across the slot. That is, these buttons are about half the width of the standard 3000 floppy eject buttons. Also, the button is so thick that it barely fits through the slot, if it were at the correct height. In my case, I somehow have to file away approximately the top half of the eject button and a little bit of its right side to get it to fit through the eject button slot. It may be easier to cut away at the 3000's case and enlarge the slot; however, I am not willing to do this. Now another, more minor, problem is that the floppy's busy light is not at the correct height to fit in the cover's light dimple. This is not a big problem, but the LED (Light Emitting Diode) will get squashed, but will still be viewable when the case is closed. Now, some small details about what to name the floppy. In my case, I bought two of these high density floppy drives and have one mounted as DF0 and the other as DF1. To accomplish this, there is a set of jumpers on the back of the floppies. The settings are listed not only in the installation instructions, but also on the back of the floppy drives, themselves. The DF0 floppy drive has its jumper set to DS0, and the DF1 drive is set to DS1. The DF0 drive goes on the end of the floppy cable, after the twist, and the DF1 drive is attached to the middle of the cable. This puts DF0 nearest the power switch. There is a jumper (J351) on the 3000's mother board, near the daughter board slot, under where a Zorro card would be installed. In this case, do not change the jumper. Leave it set to NODF1. Whenever one of these high density floppy drives are in the DF1 position, this jumper should always be set to NODF1. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: Strange but true! - Dan] If a normal, double density floppy drive is to be DF1, then jumper J351 should be moved to the DF1 position. If this is not done, then the system will not recognize that a second floppy drive exists. REVIEW These drives work just fine. The first one that I received, however, had a bad alignment problem. It would format neither double nor high density floppies, failing on the higher numbered cylinders. After returning this drive, I was sent back a replacement drive that worked just fine. The drives handle double density floppies just like my original double density floppy drive does. They can format, boot from, read, and write standard Amiga 880 KB floppies with any filesystem (e.g., OFS, FFS, FFS-International, FFS-DirCache, and so forth). They also handle MS-DOS 720 KB formatted double density floppies just fine, when using CrossDOS. The drives also handle high density floppies, both AmigaDOS 1.76 MB formats and MS-DOS 1.44 MB formatted floppies. One thing to note: if you have one of these drives as DF1 and you cannot get the system to recognize anything bigger than 880 KB for formatting, then it is likely that jumper J351 is set incorrectly (described under INSTALLATION, above). In this case, it should be set to NODF1. CrossDOS will report a "table allocation error" if a 1.44 MB floppy is inserted into DF1 when this jumper is set incorrectly. After both high density drives were installed, I subjected them to various tests. This included formatting both high and double density floppies in various Amiga formats and MS-DOS formats. I simultaneously formatted floppies in both drives, copied one floppy to another, booted from either floppy (though DF1 required holding down both mouse buttons to get the boot menu), and so forth. I also did this with my original double density floppy drive and one high density floppy drive installed, though not as intensely. In all cases, they performed flawlessly. I then tried to wanted to make a high density floppy bootable. I had no luck checking the index of the AmigaOS 3.1 DOS manual, which just led me to instructions on how to copy the original (double density) Workbench3.1 floppy to make such a disk. Then, someone helpfully pointed me towards the INSTALL command. I then used this to create a 1.76 megabyte bootable floppy. This worked just wonderful. Having twice the space for various odds and ends on a bootable floppy is a big help, even though I practically never boot from floppy. But it makes a great emergency boot disk to help recover from severe errors. DOCUMENTATION The documentation that comes with the AIR I3010HD floppy drive is very sparse, though much more detailed than the instructions on how to install the AmigaDOS 3.1 ROMs. The instructions consists of one 8.5"x17" piece of paper, printed on both sides. This sheet contains the installation instructions for AIR A1010 external, A2010 internal, A3010 internal, A5010 internal, I3010 internal, and I2010 internal drives for all models, 2000 series, 3000 series, 500 series, 3000 series, and 2000 series computers, respectively. The last two are high density models. There are six small diagrams that are somewhat useful. For installing my I3010HD drives, I had to peruse the instructions for the I3010HD, A3010, and A2010 models to extract all the information I needed. And even then, there was a bit of trial and error involved, especially in determining the exact use of the J351 DF1 floppy selection jumper. There is one section of relevant instructions I have not been able to test out. This is the interfacing of the I3010HD floppy drives so that bridgeboards can use them to read, write, and format MS-DOS 1.44 megabyte floppies. I do not own a bridgeboard. The instructions are very sparse and could use quite a bit of improvement. If the entire sheet were used solely for a particular model of floppy drive, there would be plenty of room to contain all the specifics that a novice would need to install a drive. As it is, the instructions are written for someone familiar with installing computer hardware. LIKES I like being able to store twice the usual amount of data on each floppy. It is also nice being able to use MS-DOS 1.44 megabyte floppies to transfer big files between UNIX boxes and MS-DOS boxes without having to split files in half and use two MS-DOS double density floppies. This is compounded by the fact that the UNIX "mtools" available on some UNIX platforms will not read from nor write to double density floppies. This requires a high density floppy to save things from the Unix machine, and then an MS-DOS machine to transfer them to double density floppies to be ready by Amigas. With these new high density floppy drives installed, however, all of this nonsense is eliminated. In all respects, these floppy drives function well. I also like the fact that no software patch is required to allow these drives to work. It makes the already too difficult installation process that much simpler. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS I highly dislike the laborious installation process involved in getting these drives to fit inside a 3000's case. At the least, I would like spacers that are the correct height. Filing those tiny pieces of metal down takes a few hours of careful work. Eject buttons that fit the 3000's case are also highly desirable. Being able to open my 3000's case, slap the drives in, and then close the computer up and have the drives work is the ideal installation process. Having to file and carefully fit each drive to the 3000's case is a painful process. The instructions definitely need some improvement. I could sit down in front of a word processor for a couple hours and come out with something professionally slick and more detailed than what I received with the drive. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS I have had no experience with any other high density, or even double density, floppy drives for the Amiga 3000, except for the double density drive that came with my 3000. This drive fits in my 3000 very nicely and was definitely designed specifically for the 3000. The AIR I3010HD drives, on the other hand, are designed generically, with no specific computer in mind, and have been minimally packaged with spacers and mounting screws to make them remotely possible to mount in a 3000, internally. BUGS No bugs are present, in particular, unless you consider having to custom shape several parts of the drive to your computer a bug. VENDOR SUPPORT I have had no contact with AIR, so cannot comment. WARRANTY The drives are covered by a one year warranty CONCLUSIONS I am very ambivalent about this product. It works as desired and advertised, but the installation process is extremely laborious. One would have to go through just about as much work if they just bought internal high density floppy drives meant for the 2000 or 4000 and tried installing them inside a 3000. I would rate this product as being not particularly good, perhaps 1 star out of 5. -- Wayne Rigby B.S. Computer and Systems Engineering rigby@cs.unr.edu M.S. Electrical Engineering (Parallel Computing) --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews