deck daddy wrote:mpc3000le wrote:These work with the MPC3000 Vailixi 3.50 Operating System in "single sector transfer mode".
What does that mean? I couldn't find info on this on the mansell-labs page.
And do they work with the 2000XL as well? If so my friend and I could by them together.
Storage devices are not all made equal.
Not all drives, particularly certain CF drives handle the reading and writing of "MULIPLE DATA SECTORS" in one go.
IE: They do not respond correctly when ask to deliver or receive large sized blocks of data in one go.
The only way to reliably deal with such CF drives is transact with them "ONE SECTOR AT A TIME".
IE: In smalled sized blocks.
Not all drives, particularly certain CF drives handle caching of data correctly in the standard SCSI read and write modes.
IE: Drives aimed at certain markets leave the caching up to the actual CF card.
Most CF cards are in-capable of dealing with requests to transfer large chunks of data.
It then becomes the job of the CF-DRIVE to deal with the CF card limitations.
If the drive can't deal with said CF card limitations then data transactions can only be performed in single, standard sized chunks at a time.
A recent thread on the AKAI SAMPLERS MAILING LIST points to a certain camera forum where CF performance issues are discussed at length.
The Mansell-Labs product page contains information in a simple form regarding this.
At Point 13 in the products section:
"Make SCSI Hard Disk Active menu now has the feature of enabling or disabling SCSI multi sector transfer mode."
......and in the section regarding "bugs fixed":
"Re-write of SCSI protocol engine to fix compatibility with recalictrant storage devices."
Do these drives work on a 2000XL ?
Lots of drives work on the 2000XL as its SCSI subsystem was developed to reflect protocol capabilites of its day ... have not tried this model in particular with a 2000XL, don't have a 2000XL on hand to do so.
Have used it with the MPC3000 and Vailixi 3.50 in single sector transfer mode and it works ok.
I've talked about the whole multi sector topic in other posts on MPC-FORUMS.
Rohan.
