CyberstormPPC with Acard7730A and samsung pro 850 256GB SSD

[mech]

I hope no one minds a cross post here,but i thought others might find this info useful seeing how many people don't frequent all the other forums:

Hi all,
Ii have been experimenting with the Acard aec-7730A lvd scsi to sata bridge on my amiga 4000 and have tested some firmwares as well as about 6 different cables.

setup: A4000 mediator tower with Cyberstorm PPC 128MB ram,Zoram 256,Deneb,radeon 9250,sb128,100Mbit ethernet.

I just purchased a 256Gb Samsung Pro 850 SSD for this.

I tried every combo of cables(5 different cables),and several styles of terminators from regular UW terminators to LVD/SE combo terminators.

Cables ranged from round w/twist,flat UWscsi cables,flat with twist,u160-twisted,u320 twisted. cables ranged from 24" long to 50" long(the max UWscsi can take).
With the CSPPC scsi in synchronous mode i am getting the following speed:

Diskspeed4.2:
Read: 31981560Bytes/s (approx 31.9MB/s)
Write: 33259520Bytes/s (approx 33.2MB/s)

Some notes on the Acard 7730:
With the latest firmware V1.73Q the ssd would show the correct size on the first hdtoolbox screen,but in the partition it would only show 21GB.

I reflashed the 7730a to the older 1.71Q firmware and it fixed this problem, the Samsung SSD shows the full size and partitioned out.

I am using SFS 0/0 on this setup with 2-2GBb partitions and 2-116GB partitions.

i have copied many files over as large as 2Gb and small ones and have not had any data corruption or problems so far. Experimenting with max transfer doesnt seem to change speed either or reliability.

Cable length and twist doesn't seem to matter at all. the 50" cable with 11 connectors works as well as the shorter ones. Termination is on a connector near the CSPPC side and i am using a old plextor 40x scsi cdrom drive as end termination.

Terminators i experimented with also showed no changes in speed and reliability.

Uwscsi standard calls for untwisted Ultra rated cables,but i find the lvd160/230 cables with twists are just as reliable.

The conclusion is the UWscsi on the Cyberstorm ppc rocks and is quite speedy. These figures are not much slower than i had attained with real UWscsi 15k drives.

I also tested the Acard 7720UW(i have run these for many years with dual 32GB sandisk cards rated 30MB/s, i was getting 29MB/s speeds.

[ancalimon]

I have a 7730a with the latest firmware. I guess I'll have to reflash the firmware if I want to use an ssd as well?

Currently all I'm getting is 11mb per second from the drives connected to CStormSCSI although my termination is not perfect at the moment.

terminator---- acard 7720UW-----acard 7730a----ctormppc----50pin cdwriter terminated

I probably will need another cable with more headers.

drive connected to 7730a shows as many luns. For example my WB3.9 patition shows as cybppc.device, unit 108 (I guess unit 10, lun 8)

[mech]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

I have a 7730a with the latest firmware. I guess I'll have to reflash the firmware if I want to use an ssd as well?

Currently all I'm getting is 11mb per second from the drives connected to CStormSCSI although my termination is not perfect at the moment.

terminator---- acard 7720UW-----acard 7730a----ctormppc----50pin cdwriter terminated

I probably will need another cable with more headers.

drive connected to 7730a shows as many luns. For example my WB3.9 patition shows as cybppc.device, unit 108 (I guess unit 10, lun 8)

I would try it as is, your experience may be different. It just would not show the correct size when partitioning until i went back to a earlier firmware. This may not happen with real hard drives.

In the ppc early menu, set luns to 1 for each device.That should stop it showing under multiples.

Turn on synchronous to get full speed(if it doesnt like termination it will show.)

Dont use FFS, its terribly slow. sfs 1.279 is best.

As long as the 68->50 pin adapter has highbyte termination it should be ok. They will say highbyte on it usually. the cheap adapters without it may limit you drastically.

putting a active terminator at the end of the 50 pin cable may help also.

Realise that using 50 pin stuff could kick the bus into a slower mode-Plextor makes 68 pin cd drives if you can find one(ultraplex 40x) or use a acard 7720Uw and ide dvd writer/cd drive

[Bamiga2002]

Originally Posted by mech

Dont use FFS, its terribly slow. sfs 1.279 is best.

No, PFS3 is the best

[jbenam]

Errr... an 850 Pro? Why? It's a drive which is engineered to do 500MB/s, it's a complete waste to use it on an Amiga, imho.

You could've bought one of those ultra-cheapos SSD drives made by Kingston (or ADATA or many others), which being rated for 130MB/s will still saturate the SCSI bandwidth

[mech]

Originally Posted by jbenam

Errr... an 850 Pro? Why? It's a drive which is engineered to do 500MB/s, it's a complete waste to use it on an Amiga, imho.

You could've bought one of those ultra-cheapos SSD drives made by Kingston (or ADATA or many others), which being rated for 130MB/s will still saturate the SCSI bandwidth

I was waiting for this..

Adata is garbage imho,and if i intend to spend money i will buy quality. I have used many kingston things,their cf's are hit and miss and their ssd's rate pretty low.

I paid $149 for the samsung 950 pro 256GB which is cheaper than say a 256Gb cf card.,
Speed of any ssd is faster than the amiga can go, even older ones.
the Samsung is MLC NAND which is known to generally last longer than cheaper SSD.

i was trying to push the envelope a bit on a real amiga and try a newer SSD.

I used to run 2-32Gb sandisk CF's for the last 10 years or so. they never missed a beat,but CF's will eventually be phased out.

I like my amiga and i feel this was a good purchase, My 4000 runs 24/7/365 and this ssd may outlast me!

[microfinne]

I´ve just bought a Cyberstorm mk3, SCSI cables, hd, cd-rom, and am planning to upgrade to a SSD soon. Is your setup still working and would you recommend same parts again? Are there better and cheaper parts available now for the uw scsi?