Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    My configuration is similar to what you are looking for:
    Amiga 2000, 2 MB memory expansion, 40 MB hard disk interfaced through
    the A2090 controller (DMA, supports SCSI), Sony KV1311-CR monitor,
    NEC P6 printer, second 3 1/2-inch floppy.
    
    Yes, the hard disk occupies the 5 1/4-inch floppy slot.  My
    Bridgeboard's floppy is external, as a result.
    
    MFM and RLL are techniques for recording data on a disk surface.
    RLL is more efficient, but requires a higher grade of surface, hence
    a higher price.  The Amiga 2000 doesn't care what kind of recording
    technique its disks use: that's handled by the controller (or, in
    the case of a SCSI interface, by the drive's SCSI adapter).
    
    I like the Sony monitor, but I recently saw an Electrohome with
    the flickerFixer.  It looked better than my Sony.  Check it out.
    Personal taste has a lot to do with monitor selection, so you should
    eyeball them in the store before making a choice.
    
    Assuming ``near letter quality'' means 300 dots per inch, I think
    you will have a hard time finding a printer with the speed and price
    you are looking for.  The NEC P6 is 180 dpi (the documentation says
    360 dpi, but the pins are 1/180-inch in diameter) but it is slower
    than you want.  I don't remember what I paid for it, but I am pretty
    sure it was over $300.  Printers are a significant fraction of the
    cost of a good system.  I think you will have to set your sights
    lower or raise your price significantly.  To meet your quality and
    speed requirements I think you will need a laser printer, and those
    cost several thousand dollars.
        John Sauter
    

    I have the following:
    
    Amiga 2000
    2 NEC 3.5" floppy drives
    1 NEC 42 Mbytes 5.25" 1/2 height hard drive
    A2090 controller
    2 Mbyte internal expansion board
    Sony 1311 Monitor
    Epson LQ-850 24-pin printer
    

Re: .0

The Commodore controller supports both ST-506 (IBM PC style) and SCSI
drives.  It is the only AMIGA controller to support both;  it is also
the only Amiga controller to support ST-506.

ST-506 drives are more common and cheaper than SCSI drives.  SCSI drives
are intelligent devices that have a few bells and whistles lacking in
ST-506 drives.  SCSI drives are newer, and may be the wave of the future.
The SCSI standard supports a higher data rate than the ST-506 "standard."
However, this does not imply that any particular SCSI drive is faster than
any particular ST-506 drive.

A ST-506 disk can be made into a poor man's SCSI disk by adding a SCSI
adaptor (about $100 to $200).  In fact, a lot of the "SCSI" drives sold
to Macintosh owners are ST-506 drives with adapters.

MFM and RLL are different ways of encoding data bits on the recording
medium of the disk.  RLL is a more compact encoding, and so can store
more data and read and write faster than MFM.  This is an issue only
for ST-506 disks.  An RLL disk requires an RLL controller in order for
you the reap the benefits of having an RLL disk.  An RLL controller
requires an RLL disk in order for your data not to be lost.  The Commodore
disk controller only supports MFM ST-506 disks.

As far as plugging a particular SCSI disk into a SCSI controller, it
doesn't matter whether the disk uses MFM or RLL encoding.  The reason
for this is that SCSI disks are intelligent devices that have the
controller built in.  This controller does all the dirty work of
controlling the drive, and speaks a high level protocol to the
"SCSI controller" in the computer.  Properly speaking, the board in
the computer that speaks the SCSI protocol is called a "host adapter,"
not a contoller.  The SCSI host adaptor doesn't know where the bad
blocks on the drive are, how many heads the drive has, or the encoding
method used.  In fact, a SCSI device need not me a disk drive: as long
as the device can respond to commands like "Read logical block nnn"
or "Write logical block nnn," you could put it on a SCSI buss.  There
are SCSI tape drives and SCSI laser printers (no, I don't know what
happens if you try and read from a SCSI laser printer).  Properly speaking,
the Commodore disk controller is an "ST-506 controller and SCSI Host
Adapter," not an "ST-506 and SCSI controller."  However, almost no one
uses the proper terminology!

Both ST-506 and SCSI disks come in 5.25 inch and 3.5 inch sizes.  The
3.5 inch drives typically cost more and are harder to find.  Some of
the third party Amiga SCSI disk controllers (really "host adapters" :->)
allow you to mount a 3.5 inch disk directly on the controller card
to produce a "hard card."  The advantage is that you do not use up a
drive bay.  The disadvantage is that the disk can card combination
are fatter than just a card, so you may lose a slot to the overhang.
(Although, I think that the gap between the 68020 slot in the Amiga
and the first expansion slot is wide enough that you don't lose anything
if you put the first slot.)

Regardless of whether you get a 3.5 inch or 5.25 inch hard disk, you
should make sure that the disk is a "half-height" disk rather than
a "full-height" disk.  The drive bays in the Amiga 2000 are all half-
height.  Half hight drives are the most common now days, but some of
the large capacity (> 60 Meg) are full height.

In general, any disk controller will have a list of drives supported.
(Different SCSI drives sometimes have slightly different low level
format procedures.)  If you call the manufacturer of a controller
board your are interested in, they will supply you with a list of
supported drives.

 Re: .0
    
>We assume that if we add an internal hard disk it will take up the 5 1/4 
>floppy disk slot.  Is this correct?  

A common configuration that dealers carry includes an internal 3 1/2" floppy,
and an internal 3 1/2" hard drive, 20 or 40 MBytes.  This leaves the 5 1/4" bay
available for a 5 1/4" IBM-type floppy for use with the 8088 Bridgeboard.  With
this setup, extra (external) 3 1/2" Amiga floppys may be attached from the back
of the machine.  A jumper on the motherboard is moved to configure the external
drive as DF1:, otherwise it configures as DF2:.

I elected to put two floppys internal to the machine with a 5 1/4" HD in the
lower bay.  If you go this route, you can still install the IBM Bridgeboard,
since CBM sells an external IBM 5 1/4" floppy with it's own enclosure.

On page 4 of the August AmigaWorld, Great Valley Products has an ad for 20 and
45 MByte versions of their SCSI hard card.  List prices are $599 and $850,
respectively.   These products will autoboot with V1.3 of Kickstart.  These
look pretty good to me; I wish they were available when I bought my machine.

>What would you recommend for an internal hard disk?  Is there a disk of 
>preference for the 2000?  Is this a better way to go than say the 40 or65 
>hard disk with controller that is available from ABEL?  

Hard disk prices (especially 5 1/4" half-heights) have come down in price quite
a bit.  You cvan buy { 65 MBqyte Seagate and C Ltd. SCSI controller for $800.
This is a 38 mSec drive.
       
>Concerning monitors:

>Should we stay with the AMIGA 1084 or should we seriouly consider upgrading?
>We've seen many references to the SONY monitor in this notesfile, and we've 
>seen the AMIGA 2002 monitor in a store.  Is one significantly better than the 
>others?

I seriously recommend a multisync monitor.  The Amiga chip set will be enhanced
in the future to include a 400 line non-interlaced video mode.  This mode will
require a 31.5 KHz horizontal scan rate monitor.  The current Amiga monitor can
only handle fixed scan rates of 15.75 KHz.  A multisync would work fine with
the current video modes, as well as future upgrades.  Should you ever change to
a Mac II or IBM PS/2, (Heresy!) a multisync would work with these systems.
Multisyncs are available from under $500 to $850.  I paid $569 for a Princeton
Ultrasynce 12" model.  I love it.

As you may or may not know, the current Amiga chipset uses an interlaced 400
line mode.  While this is fine for video work or genlocking, this mode flickers
on most normal persistance monitors.  On the Amiga 1084 or 2002 monitors, the
flicker is quite annoying while viewing text.  It can be minimized by careful
screen color selection.  Highly contrasting colors, such as black text on a
white background, flicker badly.  Pictures or digitized images or live
video do not appear to flicker, since there is little contrast between adjacent
scan lines.  Fortunately, most applications either run in 200 line
(non-interlaced, hence no flicker) mode, or give you the option of using either
200 or 400 lines.

In fact, the flicker is exactly what you'd see on you TV set if you were
looking at the same image.  If you need to use high resolution for CAD or
desktop publishing, you should look at an Electrohome long-persistance monitor
or a MicroWay de-interlacer card.  The de-interlacer card plugs into the A2000
video slot and combines two interlaced frames into one, totally eliminating
flicker.  The board has it's own video output, which requires a 31.5 KHz
monitor (any multisync will do).  Note that the video signal coming from the
RGB port is still normal NTSC interlaced, so this board does not preclude the
use of Genlocks or other video gagetry.  The composite video port is also
unaffected.

I'd strongly recommend viewing several display combinations before buying. 
Once you've compared the quality of the de-interlaced display with the
standard Amiga monitor, it'll be hard to turn back.  It's workstation quality.

Re: RAM prices...

Unfortunately, 256 KByte DRAM prices are currently ridiculous, and are
expected to say that way or get worse.  The 2 MBytes of RAM that I paid $500
for 18 months ago now costs 3-4X as much.  I'd recommend waiting for a while
until everyone switches over to the 1 MBit DRAMS.  These curently cost as much
per MByte as 256 K versions, but the whole world is gearing up towards the
production of these chips, so prices should drop.  The Amiga is certainly
pretty functional with 1 MB RAM, but it gets pretty awesome with 2 MB or more.


Ed.
                                                                              

        For more information on monitors that would be compatible with
        your system read note 137, relpies 9, 10, 11, and 13 in the
        Bolt::AtariST notes file.
        
        Bob

    re: .4
    
    That jumper on the motherboard just enables/disables the second
    internal drive (DF1:).  The first external drive will always be
    DF2: since they only ran the drive select lines for 2 & 3 to the
    external connector.
    
    Some software assumes the second drive is DF1:, instead of looking
    for volume labels.
                         
    I've been tempted to add a second 3.5" to my A2000 for that reason.
    
    Has anybody tried mounting a 3.5" harddisk between the power supply
    and the back of the disk drive bays?  It looks like there might be
    enough room (not sure how far a 5.25" drive might stick into that
    space).
    
    There is a hardware mod that the CBM dealers can do to enable the 
    bridgeboard to boot from an external 5.25" drive.
    
    -dave

    At Omnitek in Tewksbury I saw a 2000 with a Magnavox 873 monitor and
    a FlickerFixer.  Very impressive.  No jitter, and no scan lines. 

    - Cliff