Path: rcfnews.cs.umass.edu!barrett From: g.moran@ee.qub.ac.uk (G. Moran) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: Power Computing CD-ROM drive Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Date: 20 Apr 1995 18:15:40 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 301 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <3n68cc$fe2@kernighan.cs.umass.edu> Reply-To: g.moran@ee.qub.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Host: astro.cs.umass.edu Keywords: hardware, CD-ROM, SCSI, PCMCIA, A1200, commercial Originator: barrett@astro.cs.umass.edu PRODUCT NAME Power Computing CD-ROM Drive BRIEF DESCRIPTION The Power CD-ROM drive is an external SCSI drive for the A1200. It comes with a PCMCIA SCSI adaptor (an unbadged HiSoft Squirrel device) AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Power Computing Address: 44 a/b Stanley Street Bedford MK41 &RW England Telephone: (01234) 273000 Fax: (01234) 352207 LIST PRICE I purchased the package directly from Power for 199 UK Pounds. SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An Amiga 1200. Also usable on an Amiga 600 with some limitations. SOFTWARE None. It comes with its own driver software and CD32 emulation. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINE USED FOR TESTING Amiga 1200. Philips CM8833 Monitor. 80 Meg Internal IDE hard drive. MTEC Accelerator- 68030 CPU running at 28 MHz 68882 FPU running at 28 MHz 4 MB RAM REVIEW I had been looking to buy a CDROM drive for my A1200 for some time. However, the available options were limiting - an Archos Overdrive which was basically an AT-Bus drive with A1200 interface (no further expansion potential), or an accelerator with a SCSI card (not easy to source, and I already had an accelerator card). When I saw the adverts for the Power CD ROM drive, it seemed ideal with its SCSI interface, and early magazine reviews were favourable. The drive itself comes in an attractive, off-white, metal case, which is little larger than the drive mechanism itself - about 15x4x26cm deep. On the back panel there are 2 large amphenol-style SCSI connectors, phono sockets for Amiga audio in and mixed audio out, and a connector for an external DC power supply. It's clear that for cost reasons, Power have decided to manufacture their own external casing rather than use a more standard (and expensive) external SCSI box, and this has advantages and disadvantages. Advantages are that the unit is more compact and cheaper, but compromises mean that an external DC unit has to be used and the drive is internally terminated. This means that despite the dual SCSI connectors, the Power Drive must be the last drive in the chain. Also, the drive has the SCSI ID # internally set (in this case, to 3) and in order to change this, one must dismantle the case and set jumpers - not the easiest of operations to perform. Still, most users will have little need to change the SCSI ID anyway. The front panel is the standard drawer with an eject button, busy light, headphone socket and volume control. There's a small hole to stick a paperclip in for emergency eject. It should be noted that the volume control affects the headphones output only, and not the volume on the phono plugs at the back. The drive mechanism is a double-speed Sanyo device. The manuals list it as being a CDR-H94S type, but the SCSI mounter reports it as a Sanyo CRD 250S. Sysinfo gives it a speed of 315,836 bytes per second which is pretty much on par for a double speed CD. Certainly, although it's not as quick as a modern HD, it's more than acceptable for getting archives off of CD or playing games from. In order to interface the drive to the A1200, a PCMCIA card adaptor is provided. Although the instructions don't mention it, this is a HiSoft Squirrel SCSI adaptor. The squirrel has been reviewed as an adaptor before on c.s.a.reviews, so check that review out for a more in-depth description of the interface. [MODERATOR'S NOTE: See the file hardware/scsi/Squirrel in our archives. - Dan] Suffice to say that it does a perfectly good job as an interface to the CDROM drive and, being SCSI, leaves the door open for adding future SCSI devices like hard disks, DAT drives, or even devices like the new Iomega ZIP drive. This is a strong point in favour of the package - you are not just getting a CDROM drive, you are getting an interface which allows access to a vast range of external data products. The only reservation I would have is the rather short cable coming from the Squirrel - it's only about 40 cm long and comes directly out of the interface, rather than being detachable. It makes placement of the CD drive awkward, and you will need to buy an adaptor in order to use devices with the increasingly common compact 50-way D plug interface. Power Computing supplies two disks - one of which is the standard HiSoft Squirrel driver disk, which has an installer script to load the CD drivers and the CD32 emulator onto your hard disk, or can make a special boot floppy to boot into CD32 games from. The second disk contains some PD utilities like an audio CD player and some photo CD readers. Obviously no support is provided from Power for the PD stuff, and some of the utilities are shareware so you will have to register them if you intend to keep using them. Installation is pretty much a matter of plug in and go. Leads are provided to link the phono sound outputs of the Amiga to the CDROM drive, and you just use the leads you were using for the Amiga to link the CD/Amiga mixed output to your monitor or HiFi. If you are using the RF output of your Amiga to view the display on a TV set, then you are out of luck, as you will be unable to get a mixed audio signal from the Amiga and CD on your TV. This is an inconvenience, but I'd recommend moving to using some sort of proper audio system anyway as the increased sound quality offered by CD titles will be wasted on a TV set. Running the installer scripts results in quite a painless procedure where everything is set up on your hard drive. If you are using floppies, things are more complicated, as you need to make a special boot disk in order to access the drive. This is because SCSI drives on the Squirrel interface can't self boot. You may well need to add things to the boot disk for your system, as the installer just creates a basic boot disk and you may have made many customisations to your Workbench disk. Now, when you boot your Amiga from HD (or with the boot floppy), the machine will attempt to boot from the CD drive if a CD32 disk is present. The whole process of setting up the CD boot takes about 10-15 seconds and this will happen whether or not you have a bootable CD in, so your Workbench bootup now takes quite a bit longer which can be irritating. It'd be nice to see some way of bypassing the CD initialisation process for those times when you don't need to access the CD drive. Assuming you had a CD32 disk in the drive, the emulator will attempt to run it. I found it to be very good. I tried 4 CD32 titles - Microcosm, Liberation, Flink and Super Putty. It ran three of the titles with the only non-working one being Super Putty. This title apparently won't work with any of the other available CD32 emulation systems either. In general, compatibility should be at about 85%+. If you can find a list of titles compatible with the Zappo (Archos Overdrive) drive, it's a good bet that the Zappo compatible titles will also work on the Power drive, and the incompatible ones won't. HiSoft are working on updates all the time and release them on Aminet. If you desperately need a specific title to work, check with Power/HiSoft first or put out a message on Usenet as there is bound to be someone who has tried it before you. If you haven't booted a CD32 disk then you go into Workbench, but you now have access to a new device called CD0: which is the CDROM drive. Just put any standard CDROM disk in and you can read it in CD0:. Personally although much is made in the advertising of the CD32 game compatibility I must say that I derive most value from it as a way of accessing 'serious' disks like the Aminet archives. I have tried it with the Aminet 1-4 set, the 17-bit software collection, various Amiga CD cover disks, a CD-R (recordable CD disk) and a variety of PC CDROM disks with absolutely no problems. Access to disks is speedy and for pulling archives off CD, the drive is perfect. If you have a good file management tool like 'Directory Opus' you will find it an invaluable tool and the combination of the Power Drive, Directory Opus and a hard disk makes for a useful system. DOCUMENTATION The documentation for the package consists of a well-written, but rather sparse, manual and the standard Sanyo manual for the CDROM mechanism (which could be useful if you want to transfer the drive to a PC or 'big box' Amiga at a later date). I'd have liked to see a more comprehensive 'getting started' guide, but the information provided does give enough for even a moderately experienced user to get by on. LIKES + The drive is well built. + Performance is good: obviously not quad-speed level, but it is going to be good enough for any Amiga use. + You get a full SCSI interface which gives a lot of additional flexibility. + The CD32 emulation seems to be quite robust. With an accelerated system with Fast RAM, you will get much better performance on many games than with a real CD32. + The price is good. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS - I'm not impressed with the external power supply. This is a standard cheap DC adaptor with a 5-way multi plug connector. It has reversible polarity, so there's a chance you could fry your drive if the polarity got switched the wrong way somehow. Also, I found you really needed to set the voltage level to 12v in order to get proper reliability reading the outer tracks of CDs. It came with a level of 9.5v set. I would like to see a dedicated adaptor with only the one connector on it to avoid confusion. - It would be nice if the drive didn't have to be the last drive on the chain. This _could_ cause problems with other devices if they had a similar limitation. Also, it would be nice to have an easy way to switch SCSI ID in those cases where a user might be using the drive with another system. - You will need a CD32 type joypad to get full use out of some CD32 titles. I use the excellent Competion Pro 'Super CD32' pad and I notice that a rival drive (the Archos overdrive) now comes bundled with this. It would be nice to have this as part of the bundle (at no extra cost of course!). COMPARISON TO OTHER PRODUCTS From what I've seen of the Zappo drive, the Power CD beats it hands down in expansion potential. As a simple CD32 games player, both drives are about equal in capability but the Power has a more compatible feel by virtue of it being a standard SCSI device. Both are a similar price, but some dealers sell the Zappo in a bundle that includes some games and a joypad so pure games players might prefer that. For serious users though, the Power is the superior drive. BUGS Apart from the PSU voltage being set too low, I haven't come across any bugs in either the hardware or software. VENDOR SUPPORT Hmmm, well after a faulty mechanism in my first drive, I have to say the Power tech support people can be hard to reach - they don't work Saturdays and only work 10:30 to 4:30 weekdays. On the other hand, they were friendly enough when I did talk to them and promptly gave me a return authorisation. I shipped the drive back Monday lunchtime and had a new one (that worked perfectly) on Thursday of the same week. That's pretty good service. WARRANTY No mention of warranty in the documentation. I think it's 90 days, but best check with Power if you are concerned. CONCLUSIONS This product gets my definite recommendation. It's well priced, well specified, and will give your Amiga 1200 system a new lease of life. Compatibility with CD32 is good and the ability to access products like the Aminet set and the GoldFish CDs in my view justifies the cost of the drive to any serious user. If you have already got an accelerator card without SCSI interface, then this is an excellent way to access CDROM technology and to gain a SCSI port in one fell swoop. If you are just considering getting a CDROM drive to play CD32 games then get this as it gives you a decent CD32 emulator (with better than CD32 performance on a fast system) and opens the way for lots of exciting products in the future. I rate this product as excellent - 88% out of 100. (It would have been more but for a few niggles with presentation.) COPYRIGHT NOTICE You can freely distribute this article over the Internet, but for any conventional 'newsprint' publication you must ask my permission first. If you publish this electronically over the Internet (or elsewhere) please credit this article to me and include my email address. - gmoran@nyx.cs.du.edu --- 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