Opinion of the X-Surf 3 card?

Hi,

I have an A2000 running WB3.1 that I would like to add to my network. I am currently using Amiga Explorer via serial and finding it slow and restricted to my PC. It would be nice to run SAMBA to talk to shares on the Vista and OS X machines.

What do people think of the X-Surf 3 cards? They seem quite expensive but appear to add 2 IDE connections too which would be useful as currently the machine is SCSI only. Presumably I could use these for CDROM, hard drive or CF cards?

Anyone have experience with these cards? Are there alternatives? Are they worth the A$200 price tag?

Thanks for any advice.

The two IDE-ports should be considered as a free add-on. The necessary drivers are included on the driver CD. The ports should not be considered as full IDE ports, because you can't boot from them, and the timing is not configurable. If you want these functions, we recommend a Buddha Flash controller. The IDE ports are to be considered as temporary solutions if you want to connect a 2,5" harddrive to an A2000, A3000 or A4000 without buying further equipment such as a 3,5inch -> 2,5inch adapter. Owners of an A3000 for example can boot off a SCSI harddisk, and activate a cheap IDE harddrive and an Atapi CD-Rom. You shouldn't use a CD-writer on these ports, because only one IO-request at a time can be started by the X-Surf controller. That means a preemptive use of IDE devices - necessary for CD-writers - is impossible on the X-Surf. For this purpose we recommend a Buddha Flash controller

[zipper]

Don't forget the clockport headers...No opinion so far as I'm just beginning to try to get into the net with it. At least there are many connectors to upgrade and add all kinds of hardware.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by rjm

Hi,

I have an A2000 running WB3.1 that I would like to add to my network. I am currently using Amiga Explorer via serial and finding it slow and restricted to my PC. It would be nice to run SAMBA to talk to shares on the Vista and OS X machines.

What do people think of the X-Surf 3 cards? They seem quite expensive but appear to add 2 IDE connections too which would be useful as currently the machine is SCSI only. Presumably I could use these for CDROM, hard drive or CF cards?

Anyone have experience with these cards? Are there alternatives? Are they worth the A$200 price tag?

Thanks for any advice.

Greetings,
I too was interested in the X-Surf card, what I can tell you is this;

1. Can be tricky to set up, but using the standard software, avoid Samba like the plague, you can connect and easily to a PC or router, setting up various shares and alike, I have my PC running a single directory that the Amiga can see, so if I want anything to download to the Miggy, I just go to Aminet and go mad. The software, once it's setup and the card are pretty solid.

2. I too thought the IDE ports would save me from needing a burner for the Miggy, nope, not to be, in regard to the SCSI issue, get a SCSI to IDE converter, rather cheap and solves the problem.

3. If you get stuck, I've had every f*** up that the card can produce, so whatever your problems in setup, I already know the answer

Paul

[alexh]

I can tell you, as the owner of perhaps the first X-Surf in the UK, that they are a waste of money. (But despite what Loedown says they are not difficult to set up!)

Sorry but unless your goal is to get onto the internet with your Amiga and perform net activities such as FTP, Web browsing, eMail etc. then you should forget an X-Surf. (Forget it!)

If your goal is to transfer files from the PC to your Amiga quickly and easily then the best choice (for the Amiga 4000) is an IDE compact flash adapter (which will costs you a lowly £3). You can format your CF card in FAT and so it can be read directly in Windows with a USB card reader, and on your Amiga with the FAT95 filesystem driver. You can copy files, games etc. to the card, and transfer to the Amiga just by pluggin it in and switching on. It is fast, it is VERY cheap it is the best solution for transferring files to the Amiga 4000.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...m=250354668696

I would say the same thing for the Amiga A2000 & A3000 but you need a ACard SCSI->IDE adapter too! (About £35)

If you want a CD/DVD ROM then I recommend that you get on ebay and look out for a Pioneer SCSI 303S. They come up fairly often, they are cheap (about £10-£30) and are the best drive you can get which will work natively on an Amiga SCSI card.

[thomas]

Originally Posted by jostberg

you can't boot from them

You can, if you put the driver into a flash ROM like eFlash or Kickflash.

[thomas]

Sorry but unless your goal is to get onto the internet with your Amiga and perform net activities such as FTP, Web browsing, eMail etc. then you should forget an X-Surf. (Forget it!)

I disagree. AmigaExplorer is 1000x faster over IP than over serial and much more convenient than the CF card approach.

Thanks for all the info everyone. Sounds like it will do what I want to do and let me transfer files across much faster, either via network shares or AExplorer. Just need to decide if it is worth that much to me. I can see this old computer is going to start costing me money again, although far less than the horrific amounts I remember spending first time round ($1200 for 1.5MB of RAM..argghh).

Does anyone know if the IDE ports, while not fully configurable, can handle a memory card adapter? That does sound convenient. So does the SCSI CD, another $50... and the list go on

[alexh]

Originally Posted by thomas

I disagree. AmigaExplorer is 1000x faster over IP than over serial and much more convenient than the CF card approach.

Maybe for 1 file, but it is still much slower when transferring 100's of MB's of data.

And look at the price difference... huge.

[thomas]

but it is still much slower when transferring 100's of MB's of data.

No, it isn't. AmigaExplorer is as fast as FTP if not faster. From the 10 MBit/s network card you can expect up to 1 MByte/s data transfer rate. The IDE-CF solution is twice as fast at most. And you have to copy data twice, once to the CF card on the PC and another time from the CF to the Amiga HDD. With AmigaExplorer you can copy directly to the destination HDD. And you can stay sitting in front of the PC all the time. You don't have to pull the CF out of the PC and push it into the Amiga, probably leaving your chair. I was talking about convenience after all, not about raw speed. AmigaExplorer does it all automatically. With the CF you have to watch it and catch the moment when to carry the disk to the other computer. If you have to wait several minutes anyway, it's much more pleasing not having to watch it during the entire process IMHO.

And look at the price difference... huge.

Money does not matter to everybody. If he already considered to buy an X-Surf for the given price, seeing a cheaper solution is a pleasant surprise, but not necessarily an argument not to buy the network card.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by thomas

From the 10 MBit/s network card you can expect up to 1 MByte/s data transfer rate.

Empirical evidence says otherwise. It depends entirely on what CPU you have and even then you do not even come close to the 1.2MiB/s theoretical limit. I have an A4000 with 040@40MHz and I get about 800Kbyte/s. The guy has an A2000! Possibly without an accelerator. He's going to get 200Kbytes - 400Kbytes / sec at most.

Get the right CF card and USB adapter and you'll get 25MiB/s to the CF card. You could copy the entire WHDload catalog in minutes.

Originally Posted by thomas

The IDE-CF solution is twice as fast at most. And you have to copy data twice, once to the CF card on the PC and another time from the CF to the Amiga HDD.

I understand where you are coming from, but you do not have to copy the data twice, you can leave it on the CF card and play from there. The CF card is probably 2x the size of the HDD in the Amiga anyhow!

Originally Posted by thomas

With the CF you have to watch it and catch the moment when to carry the disk to the other computer. If you have to wait several minutes anyway, it's much more pleasing not having to watch it during the entire process IMHO.

1) The computers are probably right next to each other.
2) You dont have to watch anything.

You are much more likely to be waiting using ethernet.

And we have not even approach the fact that you can get spurious interrupts from the network card which interferes with WHDload and you sometimes have to disable it.

Originally Posted by thomas

Money does not matter to everybody.

Does to everyone I've ever met. Maybe I need some richer mates

[thomas]

Well, this thread is about opinions. It's obvious that you've got another opiniton than I have. You just need to accept that there are other opinions than yours and everything will be fine. I'd never try to convince you that networking is the better solution for *you*. But there *are* people in the world who prefer networking over carrying data mediums through their house.

This thread also is about replacing a serial networking solution by an ethernet networking solution. You gave an alternative solution, that's ok. But discussing about whether networking is good or bad actually is off-topic in this thread.

Finally, nobody but you talked about games yet. Who cares about interrupts and the like if he uses his Amiga for productivity tasks ?

[alexh]

Agreed but it is also about facts.

One fact is that the speed of the X-Surf card is dependent on CPU power; the slower the CPU the slower the transfer rate.

Another fact is they are considerably more expensive than CF cards & adapters.

As for trying to convince me that networking is a better solution, if you have facts which back it up and you could convince me. I like networking, I've got a gigabit wired network around my home. The PC, set-top-box, games console, television, NAS are all networked.

But my experiences networking the Amiga is that it can be (is) painfully slow. This is what I want to relay to people considering buying an expensive Zorro ethernet card.

[Loedown]

Originally Posted by alexh

Agreed but it is also about facts.

One fact is that the speed of the X-Surf card is dependent on CPU power and the slower CPU the slower the transfer rate.

Another fact is they are considerably more expensive than CF cards & adapters.

Back in the day, it ran nicely as my full studio MIDI driver via Octamed SS1.03C

@Alexh, sorry, but unless you know networking fairly well, the X-Surf cards can be a bitch to set up, so I stand by my original statement(s)

How big are Amiga files in general, 400Kb / s does nicely.

[alexh]

I know relatively nothing about networking. I am so used to the "plug n play" networking of PC's.

All I had to do to get my X-Surf to work was give Miami DX the SANA II driver for the X-Surf and enter a static IP for the Amiga.

On the CD that came with the X-Surf is a "one-touch" Amiga-samba setup which mounted the Amiga drives to be visible on the PC network. I used that for quite a while but years later I installed the excellent AmigaExplorer (on the PC and Amiga) and once again it just worked.

Maybe if things go wrong it is a bitch to find the problem? For me, the experience was a good one, everything "just worked". Everyone's experiences are different. I should have said "Despite what loedown says; I did not find it difficult to set up"

For the odd file, 400Kb/s is good enough. To backup a hard drive, or transfer an entire collection of files I found it painfully slow. At first I used to put the Amiga hard drive in the PC and use WinUAE to transfer any quantity of data, now I use a CF card formatted FAT/FAT32.

Occasionally I still use the X-Surf (and AmigaExplorer) if I want to ADF a floppy disk and transfer to the PC without connecting the Amiga to a monitor or keyboard. It is very handy for that.

Just my experiences of networking with Amiga's.

[Loedown]

Greetings,
I agree with the speed for HDD backup and alike, I backed up my 250 Mb HDD, that took about 2.5 hours to transfer to the PC.

IMHO, not bad for what they are, but certainly over priced.

[alexh]

While I do not particularly like native Amiga USB, if you are set on networking your Amiga, might be worth looking (especially if you have a Zorro III Amiga) at a Deneb USB2.0 adapter and a USB Network dongle.

The Deneb offers a lot more for your money than an X-Surf, a wealth of USB devices becomes available (albeit only under workbench).

USB Keyboard/mouse
USB Key / USB HDD
USB Sound Card
USB Network card
etc.

[OverDose]

I don't have an X-Surf, but I have network cards in my three main amigas, and I don't use them But to be honest that is because I have never got everything nice and stable.

For transferring files I use: CF-Card (and micro hdd), Jaz and Zip drive, CD. I find CD is what I am using most often, because it is easiest. Also, I occasionally move hard drives between computers.

I think AlexH has a good point. Think about what the end result is that you are trying to achieve. There might be other solutions.

But if you're like me, and really enjoy mucking around with things, fiddling, setting stuff up, and then not using it, a Network card might be just the kind of toy you need