🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <DVP.90Jan16155306@crg3.UUCP> (Dan Vander Ploeg) writes:
>An excellent model of civilized discourse!  On the other hand, Chuck
>McManis, whose postings I used to read no matter what the subject
>line, seemed almost as rude as Larry Phillips.  What is it about the
>Net that encourages such behavior?

I apologize for my rudeness, it is always inexcusable. In the course
of watching this group grow from it's merest beginnings of net.micro.amiga
to the current traffic killer I've become a bit jaded I suppose. It would
appear that Larry and I both read your message to be : 

"I keep asking people if I can run more than 1 external drive, and both
 they and the documentation tell me I can't. So no one has answered my
 question, 'Can I run more than 1 external drive?'"

It reads sort of like a non-sequitur. Doug's response was indeed the correct
one. Specifically :

Yes, you might be able to do it, however there are several random
factors such as the amount of excess power available from your power
supply. If the power supply meets C/A specs then you will probably be
fine however many power supplies derate things such as load regulation
when they get near the upper limits of the spec. A good power supply
will be in spec right up to the limit, but those are expensive and C/A
doesn't care to spend a lot on the power budget. Thus it might work
most of the time until both floppies try to step at the same time 
whereupon your system will crash. If you have a scope and a pile of 
power resistors you can characterize your supply by drawing more and
more current from it while measuring line regulation, ripple, and transient
response (ie what happens when you change the load quickly). Then you
can make a quite qualified statement about whether or not the configuration
will work. Be sure and check the supply cold (use freeze spray) and warm
(a hair dryer works fine). Given that effort you will know that your supply
works or doesn't, but C/A may have (I believe they do) several suppliers
for power supplies, and there are variations within the same power supply
manufacturer's units. So if you find that your system will handle it, you
can't generalize that to another system. Because of all these factors a
couple of things come out : 
	1) Asking for other people's experience is less useful than it 
	   might originally appear.
	2) Your answer won't necessarily be valuable to anyone else.

If you had asked the question, "What is the worse that could happen if
I tried this to see if it will work?" Then the answer is a simple, the
system won't boot in the worse case, and will crash more frequently in
the common case, and will run fine in the exceptional case. What I 
personally wanted to avoid was accidently letting someone who was on
an extremely tight budget mistakenly believe that this had a good chance
of working and to go out and spend $X on one or two drives only to find
that their power supply couldn't hack it and then blame "us" for the
bogus advice. That combined with some built in aversion to newcomers
to the Amiga that buy one and then bitch about what it doesn't do as
opposed to what it does made for an ugly situation. I'm sorry.

P.S. Some external drives don't pass power, others do. Make sure you get one
     that does.

--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@Eng.Sun.COM
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.
"If it didn't have bones in it, it wouldn't be crunchy now would it?!"