| From: | Jonathan Day |
| Date: | 4 Aug 2001 at 15:39:06 |
| Subject: | AA22 review of the PlexWriter |
Hi
Okay, so I'm a little behind with reading AA!
First off let me just say I enjoy Neil's style of writing, the installation
process falling over until SKIPROMUPDATES is added, for example.
Now for the "But" ;-)
Neil seems to be a great SCSI fan, and TBH I can understand this given it's
merits over 'Classic' IDE solutions. The standard IDE interface in my A1200
is crap and the review of the PlexWriter reflected this, being very anti
IDE.
The thing is many users now own Flyers, and in 3 months many (hopefully) of
us will be using AmigaONEs which will have a decent IDE interface.
The main thing that came across in the review, to me anyway, was that this
drive was IDE, and IDE is crap. I acknowledge that Neil does clearly state
that Flyer users should find it okay, and I think it was right for Neil to
point out the crap abilities of standard Amiga IDE and compare them to a PC,
but should "IDE is crap" really form the major premise of the review?
The boxout states:
SYSTEM: Any Amiga with a fast IDE interface and plenty of RAM.
SUMMARY: A good drive, but the Amiga with it's slow IDE interface, really
needs a SCSI version.
2/4
Plenty of RAM? Eh? What's this? There's no mention of RAM in the review. Is
there a minimum required? And what is "plenty" nowadays on an Amiga, it used
to be 8Mb? (I have 32Mb Fast, BTW)
I would have thought something like the following would perhaps have been a
little better:
SYSTEM: Any Amiga with an IDE interface and at least x Mb RAM, but the more
the better.
SUMMARY: A well built drive, excellent results from a fast IDE interface,
but a standard IDE interface will get nowhere near the available speeds,
save a few quid and buy a slower drive.
3/4
In the editorial of the same issue, David Stroud says we "can't keep AA
going exclusively 'Classic Amiga' magazine forever..." Whilst I know David
was talking about content not directly Amiga related, I feel that it is all
part of the same thing. To me, it seemed as if the PlexWriter got a "bad"
review cos the Amiga IDE interface is crap where-as it should have been the
other way round.
Jon
PS. Once we do get a decent IDE interface with the AmigaONE, what is the
comparison going to be like with respect to SCSI v IDE? Does SCSI still come
out hands down, or should someone like me who no-longer has SCSI hardware
keep to the cheaper IDE, or even go for USB?
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