08/1997
Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: tetsuo@brahman.nullnet.fi (Henrik Tikanvaara) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Quantum Fireball 1280A A63 IDE hard drive Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 21 Mar 1996 01:49:31 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 541 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <4iqcjb$sk0@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: tetsuo@brahman.nullnet.fi (Henrik Tikanvaara) NNTP-Posting-Host: knots.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, hard drive, IDE, commercial X-Review-Number: Volume 1996 Number 8 Originator: barrett@knots.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Quantum Fireball 1280A A63. BRIEF DESCRIPTION A very fast, general 3.5" IDE hard drive that performs very well on Amiga, specifically on my A1200. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Quantum Corporation Address: 500 McCarthy Blvd Milpitas, CA 95035 USA Telephone: 408-894-4000, 1 800 624-5545 Geneva, Switzerland: 41 22 929 9111 World Wide Web: http://www.quantum.com/ LIST PRICE I don't know the list price, I paid 1390FIM for mine, which was very reasonable in comparison to other, similar drives. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE For 2.5" IDE interfaces, a 44-to-40 pin IDE connector along with a 4-pin standard power connector, as seen on usual 3.5" drives. Some RAM is required by each partition, and fast RAM is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It will DOUBLE the performance. An accelerator will also increase speed. I installed the drive internally to my A1200. Since the drive is 3.5" in size, this required some "hacking". I believe there's a text file on Aminet, which describes this procedure. SOFTWARE I had problems getting Amiga to recognize the drive. The standard HDToolBox software barely recognized it, and crashed after any attempts to configure the drive. I never found out why this happened, but everything went fine using the Microbotics RDPrep software, available on Aminet. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING A1200, 2 MB Chip RAM, 4 MB Fast RAM Blizzard IV 50MHz 68030 accelerator Kickstart 39.106, Workbench 39.29 + Other irrelevant stuff. INSTALLATION Hardware installation depends on the Amiga model, drive partitioning and formatting is a breeze with appropriate software. REVIEW The drive gives you 1280 MB of storage, MB=10^6. Fireball is also very fast, and with the speed and capacity combined, it has been nothing but pure pleasure to use. Here are different tests, all done directly after a cold-boot, with only bare necessities of the system loaded up. The drive seems to work fine with a 16MB MaxTransfer setting, another indication of quality in design. SysInfo, raw read speed: Using Fast RAM 2.3MB/s Using Chip RAM 1.2MB/s I think this highlites the need for Fast RAM pretty well... Here are SeekSpeed results. They were performed on a 500MB partition, so they reflect worst-case performance. Using smaller partitions, very long seeks will be avoided. In real-world use, this will not make much of a difference though. There are faster drives in seeking (I have heard of 9ms average seek times), but you must always look at the real performance. Thus, these two tests only give some picture of the hardware. SeekSpeed V37.12 by Richard Waspe Results for device : DH1: Device Driver : scsi.device CPU : 68030 FPU : No FPU AddBuffers : 20 Total number of Sectors : 1024126 Number of Free Sectors : 462219 Bytes per Sector : 512 Sequential Seek : Of 1 Sector took : 0.86 mS Of 8 Sector took : 2.42 mS Of 16 Sectors took : 4.30 mS Of 24 Sectors took : 6.10 mS Random Seek of 1 Sector : 0.10 of Drive width took : 12.03 mS 0.33 of Drive width took : 12.03 mS 0.50 of Drive width took : 12.14 mS 0.90 of Drive width took : 16.27 mS Random seek of 8 Sectors : 0.10 of Drive width took : 12.30 mS 0.33 of Drive width took : 12.74 mS 0.50 of Drive width took : 12.38 mS 0.90 of Drive width took : 17.55 mS 020/14 PROCESSOR SPECIFIC RESULTS And now, the most interesting tests, real reads, writes, seeks etc. on a real file-system. First, here's data for a 020/14 with Fast RAM Amiga: MKSoft DiskSpeed 4.2 Copyright ) 1989-92 MKSoft Development ------------------------------------------------------------ CPU: 68020 AmigaOS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: DH0: Buffers: 20 Comments: Quantum Fireball 1280A A63. Unlimited MaxTransfer, no caches, FFS CPU Speed Rating: 633 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 43 files/sec | CPU Available: 58% File Open: 119 files/sec | CPU Available: 26% Directory Scan: 502 files/sec | CPU Available: 2% File Delete: 235 files/sec | CPU Available: 5% Seek/Read: 116 seeks/sec | CPU Available: 68% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 174398 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 16% Write to file: 194191 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 16% Read from file: 294555 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 899584 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Write to file: 1027072 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 1177088 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 7% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1337719 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Write to file: 1552384 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 1810432 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 7% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1477772 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Write to file: 1732373 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 2026549 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Average CPU Available: 13% | CPU Availability index: 82 This test was done using the above set-up, but with Professional File System: MKSoft DiskSpeed 4.2 Copyright ) 1989-92 MKSoft Development ------------------------------------------------------------ CPU: 68020 AmigaOS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: DH3: Buffers:Comments: Quantum Fireball 1280A, unlimited MaxTransfer, no caches, PFS CPU Speed Rating: 633 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 35 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% File Open: 174 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% Directory Scan: 1320 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% File Delete: 226 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% Seek/Read: 100 seeks/sec | CPU Available: 69% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 157784 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Write to file: 256223 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 235362 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 391136 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Write to file: 676864 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 737792 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 11% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 688780 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Write to file: 1243629 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 1433600 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 4% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1067994 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Write to file: 1349270 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 1570900 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Average CPU Available: 5% | CPU Availability index: 32 030/50 PROCESSOR SPECIFIC RESULTS Here is a 030/50, Fast RAM, FFS test. I'd like to point out that performance gets closer to the absolute hardware limit, than with the slower set-up. There's also a 60% speed increase in directory scanning, amongst other things: MKSoft DiskSpeed 4.2 Copyright ) 1989-92 MKSoft Development ------------------------------------------------------------ CPU: 68030 AmigaOS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: DH1: Buffers: 20 Comments: 030 @ 50MHz, FFS, full MaxTransfer, no caches. CPU Speed Rating: 2742 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 42 files/sec | CPU Available: 76% File Open: 165 files/sec | CPU Available: 36% Directory Scan: 822 files/sec | CPU Available: 3% File Delete: 455 files/sec | CPU Available: 7% Seek/Read: 118 seeks/sec | CPU Available: 79% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 253088 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 22% Write to file: 269440 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 22% Read from file: 454336 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1171968 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Write to file: 1356800 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Read from file: 1473024 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 9% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1474968 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 14% Write to file: 1854946 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Read from file: 1963625 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 10% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1802240 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Write to file: 2018997 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 2143928 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 10% Average CPU Available: 18% | CPU Availability index: 493 And now the Professional File System test with the same set-up: MKSoft DiskSpeed 4.2 Copyright ) 1989-92 MKSoft Development ------------------------------------------------------------ CPU: 68030 AmigaOS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: DH3: Buffers: Comments: 030 @ 50MHz, PFS, full MaxTransfer, no caches. CPU Speed Rating: 2742 Testing directory manipulation speed. File Create: 101 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% File Open: 362 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% Directory Scan: 2450 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% File Delete: 576 files/sec | CPU Available: 0% Seek/Read: 107 seeks/sec | CPU Available: 78% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 299264 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Write to file: 415628 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 350868 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 5% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 763392 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Write to file: 949760 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 5% Read from file: 785408 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 34% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1114030 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Write to file: 1576960 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 5% Read from file: 1476809 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 23% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1246782 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 4% Write to file: 1769472 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 1966886 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 4% Average CPU Available: 10% | CPU Availability index: 274 QUANTUM INFORMATION The Quantum web-site contains huge amounts of information on many of their products, including the Fireball. If you have access to a web-browser, it's a good idea to check it out! DOCUMENTATION The drive came with no documentation, as usually is the case with IDE/PC hard drives. LIKES This drive is a real performer! I have never heard of such a fast IDE drive, and the capacity should satisfy even the most space-hungry applications. All smaller reads and writes happen in a flash. =) At first, everything felt as though I had the system running from RAM. C compiling and unpacking archives are the things that you really notice the performance with. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS Before buying the Blizzard accelerator, the drive had the usual "spin-up problem", that is, a reset was needed to make it boot after turning on the computer. But Blizzard delays boot-up by a second or two, and this somehow fixes the problem. I now believe the fault is in the Amiga OS, not in the drives. I have no real dislikes, but the idea of user control over the cache features crossed my mind... COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS This drive seems to be amongst the fastest, if not THE fastest IDE drive currently in the market. No, calling it the fastest is probably going too far, but I would like to hear about any other drives which perform similarly. Even the Western Digital Caviar drives seem to be slower, though they are generally regarded as very fast.. I am wondering whether the IDE interface used in Amiga 1200 and 4000 is becoming a bottle-neck. BUGS None. ;) VENDOR SUPPORT I have needed no vendor support, hopefully and probably never will. WARRANTY "* This warranty is standard when products are purchased directly through authorized Quantum distributors/dealers. Unless otherwise agreed, a one-year warranty is provided to all OEMs purchasing directly from Quantum. End-user warranties provided by computer manufacturers." CONCLUSIONS I think this drive pushes the IDE system pretty well to its limits, to get a better performance, you'd certainly need to use some high quality SCSI drive interface coupled with a high quality SCSI hard drive. But then comes the question of money, remember that on top of all, this drive was also quite cheap. Nothing less than 5 full stars will suffice. ADDITIONAL MEMORY-ALIGNMENT SPECIFIC RESULTS This is something you don't need to read, unless you really are interested: I noticed that Fireball benefits from 32-bit aligned, Fast RAM a LOT. I suspect it has to do with DMA, but I'm only happy to see it - the drive has been designed to take advantage of a good host system. My old Toshiba 2.5" drive performed the same, whether Chip or Fast RAM, or 32/16-bit memory alignment. Only 8-bit alignment caused performance loss, after which the Toshiba drive was DEAD SLOW. Anyway, here are full DiskSpeed results, with all possible alignments and memory types. Check out MEMF_CHIP, byte alignment write. ;) MKSoft DiskSpeed 4.2 Copyright ) 1989-92 MKSoft Development ------------------------------------------------------------ CPU: 68030 AmigaOS Version: 39.106 Normal Video DMA Device: DH1: Buffers: 20 Comments: How different memory alignments affect Fireball performance. CPU Speed Rating: 2728 Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 191592 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 18% Write to file: 203814 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 19% Read from file: 327063 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1013785 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Write to file: 1142784 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Read from file: 1242112 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 9% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1316425 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 17% Write to file: 1738626 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Read from file: 1779535 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 12% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1676689 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 5% Write to file: 1979057 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 2138628 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 6% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 185402 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 18% Write to file: 84981 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 45% Read from file: 300288 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 245248 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 27% Write to file: 116488 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 38% Read from file: 433338 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 248643 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 29% Write to file: 117797 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 40% Read from file: 455732 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 259003 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 27% Write to file: 118443 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 39% Read from file: 427740 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 9% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 180073 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 18% Write to file: 97523 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 35% Read from file: 288155 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 233750 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 26% Write to file: 114076 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 38% Read from file: 405965 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 238415 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 27% Write to file: 114387 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 39% Read from file: 383203 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 11% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_FAST, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 244822 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 27% Write to file: 115954 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 39% Read from file: 404831 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 186688 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 14% Write to file: 209024 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 11% Read from file: 290075 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 782848 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Write to file: 848347 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 841728 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 6% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1044480 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Write to file: 1137266 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Read from file: 1066390 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 6% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_CHIP, LONG-aligned buffer. Create file: 1123015 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Write to file: 1223768 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 0% Read from file: 1176706 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 3% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_CHIP, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 176211 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 18% Write to file: 106034 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 28% Read from file: 282460 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_CHIP, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 228261 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 26% Write to file: 115495 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 36% Read from file: 392872 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_CHIP, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 226712 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 26% Write to file: 112027 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 39% Read from file: 413024 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_CHIP, WORD-aligned buffer. Create file: 238015 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 27% Write to file: 107205 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 42% Read from file: 386026 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 9% Testing with a 512 byte, MEMF_CHIP, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 162775 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 16% Write to file: 94800 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 31% Read from file: 241889 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 2% Testing with a 4096 byte, MEMF_CHIP, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 200653 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 23% Write to file: 107038 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 35% Read from file: 322547 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Testing with a 32768 byte, MEMF_CHIP, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 203023 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 25% Write to file: 101650 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 39% Read from file: 335536 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 1% Testing with a 262144 byte, MEMF_CHIP, BYTE-aligned buffer. Create file: 205281 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 24% Write to file: 103891 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 37% Read from file: 314774 bytes/sec | CPU Available: 8% Average CPU Available: 17% | CPU Availability index: 464 COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1996 Henrik Tikanvaara tetsuo@brahman.nullnet.fi --- Accepted and posted by Daniel Barrett, comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator 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