User avatar
jrobbins70

Posted Thu Oct 15, 2020 10:00 pm

I recently purchased a SCSI2SD device (version 6) from inertialcomputing.com for my Amiga 3000 and I have to say, it's very impressive. My biggest challenge and the reason why I purchased it was due to my 72G scsi hard disk being really hot and overheating inside the A3000's case. I couldn't do a backup without taking the case off.

Anyhoo so I decided to buy a SCSI to SD converter and popped in a $20 128GB SD card. I was very surprised that the device is powered by the 50 pin scsi connector alone. Really cool.

You can partition your SD card using HDToolbox just as normal. You have to use the windows config utility to set the SCSI2SD device to the size of your SD card. Then connect it to the Amiga and you're off to the races.

It's the same speed as my physical hard disk but it's completely silent and there's no latency when seeking for files. I think you can buy a little enclosure for it but I didn't.

I recommend this doodad to anyone who has a failing hard disk, a hot drive (like myself) or just wants to try something cool. I believe the SCSI2SD works with any scsi 1 and 2 controller on any machine (amiga or otherwise).

J

User avatar
Silverstreak
YouTube

Posted Fri Oct 16, 2020 12:08 am

They’re pretty neat devices. I was a bit stumped at first, these things don’t come with a manual, but eventually I found enough on the internet to get going.

My breakthrough was realising it was the board, and not the memory card you configure!

It’s not quite quick enough for the Newtek Flyer video scsi chain for example, but very nice for a system drive replacement. As you say, completely quiet and runs cool too with bus power!

User avatar
BloodyCactus
Lexington VA

Posted Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:17 am

I have some SCSI2SD in my old E-MU Samplers, v5.1's and v6's. If your scsi bus can handle the v6 speed upgrade its nice, otherwise the v5.1 compatability is rock solid.

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:39 am

I have a couple of these and they are nice. The difference between the v5.1 and the V6 are noticeable if you have a fast enough Mac or Amiga. For stock A500s or A2000s then a v5.1 is certainly fine from what I can tell. Same goes for older Macs. If you have a PowerPC Mac then a 6 would be a faster solution.

The other difference between the 2 versions is that with the version 6 you actually save all the config information on the SD card itself. This makes it nice to pre-configure a few different SD cards for use with different setups and save it to individual SD cards. Then you only need to swap the SD cards out. With the V5.1 you actually configure and save the data to the device itself. So if you use it with different systems then you have to reconfigure the device each time. This makes the V6 a better solution if you want to use it with different systems, IMHO anyway.

The v6 apparently lets you mount the storage on your desktop since it supports a type of bridge mode that the v5.1 does not.

User avatar
obitus1990
USA

Posted Fri Oct 16, 2020 5:39 pm

I have several of these as well, in my various Amiga systems. I am debating putting one inside my C64's CMD hard drive...

User avatar
blindguy

Posted Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:15 am

Zippy Zapp wrote:
Fri Oct 16, 2020 7:39 am
I have a couple of these and they are nice. The difference between the v5.1 and the V6 are noticeable if you have a fast enough Mac or Amiga. For stock A500s or A2000s then a v5.1 is certainly fine from what I can tell. Same goes for older Macs. If you have a PowerPC Mac then a 6 would be a faster solution.

The other difference between the 2 versions is that with the version 6 you actually save all the config information on the SD card itself. This makes it nice to pre-configure a few different SD cards for use with different setups and save it to individual SD cards. Then you only need to swap the SD cards out. With the V5.1 you actually configure and save the data to the device itself. So if you use it with different systems then you have to reconfigure the device each time. This makes the V6 a better solution if you want to use it with different systems, IMHO anyway.

The v6 apparently lets you mount the storage on your desktop since it supports a type of bridge mode that the v5.1 does not.
I have a A2000 with a 50hz 030 and a v5.1. I'm getting between 1.8 and 2.1 from sysinfo.
Any thoughts on how much faster it would be with a v6?

Thanks!

User avatar
jrobbins70

Posted Thu Oct 22, 2020 2:55 pm

blindguy wrote:
Thu Oct 22, 2020 10:15 am

I have a A2000 with a 50hz 030 and a v5.1. I'm getting between 1.8 and 2.1 from sysinfo.
Any thoughts on how much faster it would be with a v6?

Thanks!
I don't think it'll be that much faster. The speed seems to depend on your SCSI card.

My scsi2sd v6 on a stock Amiga 3000 scsi gets about 2.1Mb/s. On my Fastlane Z3 it gets about 8Mb/s.

Identical numbers to my real fast/wide scsi 2 hard drive by Seagate.

Unless you have another real scsi drive getting bigger numbers, I doubt changing from v5.1 to v6 will make a diff.

J

User avatar
Zippy Zapp
CA, USA

Posted Thu Oct 22, 2020 5:03 pm

^^ This.

On Amigas especially 2000's it won't make much of a difference. The V6 shines with faster Systems using Faster SCSI II. IE PowerMacs that were SCSI based will max it out and probably will not as fast as using an actual HD that could get 15MB+ per second in the faster PowerMacs. Although I have not done any actual benchmarks there are some that have over on 68kmla.





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