Pal Jr.
iq...@pnet01.uucp
Does anyone have the Pal Jr. expansion system that is manufactured by
Byte by Byte?
Could you please e-mail me some kind of review?
From what I've read this sounds like a pretty good product (except for
the price), but I haven't seen too many messages about it.
Also, is there a (good) Pascal compiler for the Amiga?
Thank you for any help!
Iqbal Hans
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ma...@unisec.uucp
>
> Does anyone have the Pal Jr. expansion system that is manufactured by
> Byte by Byte?
> Could you please e-mail me some kind of review?
>
> From what I've read this sounds like a pretty good product (except for
> the price), but I haven't seen too many messages about it.
>
> Iqbal Hans
>
I ordered my Pal Jr. on May 4 and at that time was told it would be
delivered in three weeks. After Fed-Xing my purchase authorization to
them, I called a few days later to find out how things were coming.
I was told that it would be "another three weeks", since they had
"run out of parts". I am basically a trusting soul, but that line is
a little hard to swallow. Does anyone in net land have "inside info"
on what is going on at Byte-by-Byte? Are they actually snagged on
FCC certification or do they really have production problems?
As for the product, Iqbal, there's a comparison of its performance
to four other hard drives (CLtd., MAS, Supra, Xebec) in
the latest AmigaWorld. Out of about 17 tests, the Pal Jr. came in
first (or tied for first) in all but one category. The price is a bit
steep, but it's a nice package if you need hard disk, memory and
clock/calendar + expansion all at once (I do, I do!). It alleviates
my fears of multi-vendor product incompatibility. My only remaining
concern is that I may never get to use one :-).
Mark
--
| Mark R. Rinfret, SofTech, Inc. ma...@unisec.usi.com |
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| work: (401)-849-4174 home: (401)-846-7639 |
Joe Mueller
> on what is going on at Byte-by-Byte? Are they actually snagged on
> FCC certification or do they really have production problems?
>
> | Mark R. Rinfret, SofTech, Inc. ma...@unisec.usi.com |
I purchased one of the PAL JR systems by Byte By Byte. My system works
fairly well but it does have two bugs in it. One bug is that the real time
clock sometimes gives me random dates (so it's not much good to me) and the
other is that while doing something that accesses the disk a lot, I get a
requestor that says I have a read/write error. If I ask AmigaDOS to retry
it always works so it looks like some type of timing problem. Both of these
problems occur infrequently but since it's under warranty I'm sending it back
to be repaired/replaced.
I can assure you, they are shipping products. If more systems than mine have
these problems, they may be temporarily suspending shipment until they clean
up the problem. They seem to be very honest in my dealings with them, I
ordered the system in December of last year but because of production problems
could not send it until April (they told me this BEFORE I ordered it, but
I was willing to wait) and they didn't cash my check until they shipped it.
Other than the above mentioned problems, I LOVE my PAL! I just wish Commodore
designed the system so that it would automatically boot from the hard disk and
I'd throw my floppies in the closet!
Joe Mueller
...!nsc!nscpdc!joemu
Bob Page
>other is that while doing something that accesses the disk a lot, I get a
>requestor that says I have a read/write error. If I ask AmigaDOS to retry
>it always works so it looks like some type of timing problem.
The first version of the CLtd harddisk.device did this from time to time
too. At first I thought it was a bus/timing problem with the interface,
but CLtd came out with a new version of the driver (I downloaded it from
People/Link, CLtd didn't tell me about it) and have only seen it once
since then. So I would guess it's not your PAL but is the driver.
The other day I turned on my system after it had been powered off for
about 3-4 days (hey, I've been a busy guy, ok?) -- It's been pretty hot
and muggy the past week, although the Amiga never sees direct sunlight.
Anyway, I got a "Error Validating Disk --- Key Error" (or something)
requestor, and my heart went into my throat. I clicked the "Cancel"
gadget (button?) about 500 times, because I didn't want to face the
fact that my disk was trashed. Finally I clicked "Retry", which gave
me the message I didn't want to see: That my disk was corrupted, and
I had to use DISKDOCTOR to fix it.
I refused, rebooted the Amiga and everything came up fine. Don't know
if it was the driver, the interface or the media, but everything seems
to be OK now. Lemme find 30 disks to back this guy up...
..Bob
--
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@ulowell.{uucp,edu,csnet}
Scott Turner
>other is that while doing something that accesses the disk a lot, I get a
>requestor that says I have a read/write error. If I ask AmigaDOS to retry
>it always works so it looks like some type of timing problem. Both of these
(The original MicroForge driver I got didn't bother itself over this) I did
this because some weird things were happening with my system. I had just put
in a ST4051 and as it turned out it was a DUD. I keep getting R/W errors from
the dog when using a driver that didn't check error status. But when I had it
start returning the error, so I could figure out what the #$@! was going on,
the read/write errors vanished. What I got instead was other reactions.
My conclusion is that read/write errors come from amigadog when it checks the
checksum on the block that it has just read.
This sets off a couple questions in my mind that you may wish to ask Byte by
Byte.
Does their driver issue a sense status command to the SCSI controller when a
check status is reported? Or does it just assume the transfer went through?
If they do, how did those blocks get through??? :)
My driver nailed EVERY bad block off that ST4051 after I put in error checking,
I never saw another read/write error message. I started seeing "Transfer failed"
instead for example.
Another answer is that your ram is flakey. The block could be read into ram and
bit(s) get flipped before it's checksum got checked. And when you retried the
block was read in again and the bit(s) DIDN'T get flipped that time.
[ Above posted where CATS could see and comment ]
Scott Turner
--
L5 Computing, the home of Merlin, Arthur, Excalibur and the CRAM.
GEnie: JST | UUCP: stride!l5comp!scotty | 12311 Maplewood Ave; Edmonds WA 98020
If Motorola had wanted us to use BPTR's they'd have built in shifts on A regs
[ BCPL? Just say *NO*! ] (I don't smoke, send flames to /dev/null)
ma...@unisec.uucp
first time:
It's here! My Pal Jr. arrived yesterday afternoon (Tue.) - about a week
sooner than expected, according to my last conversation with folks at
Byte-by-Byte. No time for a full-blown review (I'll be happy to answer
e-mail questions), but here's a quick rundown on my impressions:
The unit arrived in a rather large box, very well packed with foam supports.
It comes with Kickstart 1.2 and a special Workbench disk. The physical
dimensions are almost identical to the Amiga 1000, less the "legs". The
Pal Jr. "piggybacks" the Amiga. A "staple" (neat name for a bus connector
assembly) is provided which slaps on the right side to connect the Amiga's
86 pin bus connector to the Pal Jr.'s 100 pin connector - very neat and easy!
An AC outlet is provided at the back into which you plug the Amiga's power
cable. This insures proper cycling of power (Pal Jr. first) and also saves
me from having to buy a bigger outlet box :-). Installation is really a
snap and everything went "by the numbers". The unit is impressively quiet
in operation.
I did notice a few minor glitches with some software. If I run Preferences
from the CLI, the CLI hangs upon exit from Preferences. However, Preferences
works fine from the WorkBench which is now actually a feature of my Amiga
that I find appealing. Those icons just snap into place! I've also noticed
that I can't warmstart the way I used to - If I have a runaway situation,
I have to power off, then load Kickstart, then WorkBench. I haven't attempted
to contact the company about this yet - might be something I'm doing wrong
though I can't imagine what.
I've installed Scribble!, Organize!, Aegis Draw Plus, DMCS and Dpaint II.
I'm having a little trouble with the Electronic Arts stuff - I'm not sure how
they've hardwired pathnames for voices, fonts, etc. I may take a little tour
with FileZap later.
That's all for now. Oh yeah - the price was $1495 plus Federal Express
shipping for a grand total of $1532. Though I choked on the price
when first considering this product, I'm very pleased with it.
Mark
--
| Mark R. Rinfret, SofTech, Inc. ma...@unisec.usi.com |
mi...@laidbak.uucp
> [ stuff about setting up his Pal Jr. ]
>
>That's all for now. Oh yeah - the price was $1495 plus Federal Express
>shipping for a grand total of $1532. Though I choked on the price
>when first considering this product, I'm very pleased with it.
I received my Pal Jr. on Thursday (June 4)!!! Well worth the wait.
I bought the 40 Meg harddisk version.
I have had no trouble with warmstarting the computer since adding
junior. You may have some hardware trouble there. I don't recall
how I ran preferences, but it worked fine for me. I suspect I ran it
from the CLI since I don't normally use the workbench.
The hardware was quite easy to install and it came up perfectly on the
first try without any effort. I had a little trouble reformatting the
hard disk, but worked it out without too much trouble (I wanted four
separate partitions instead of the one it came with).
I played with Dpaint II last night on the hard disk. The first time I
brought it up I could not load or save any pictures. I later realized
that it was because I didn't have any floppy in DF1:. Dpaint II
automatically assumes DF1: as the default drive for pictures. It really
should use an assigned name like PICS: or something that the user can
set to whatever he likes (I use dh3:dp2/pictures).
I will also be willing to answer questions anyone might have on the
Pal Jr. I am quite happy with mine so far.
---------
Mike Roth - {sun|allegra|ihnp4}!laidbak!miker or mi...@laidbak.UUCP
pe...@sugar.uucp
> automatically assumes DF1: as the default drive for pictures. It really
> should use an assigned name like PICS: or something that the user can
All programs should really do this... they should also look up the names of
mounted volumes (a-la my "mounted" program: which was really an excersize in
reading the volume list) and present them to the user in a menu or
something.