alan@km4ba.UUCP (Alan Barrow) (11/13/89)
Can anyone recommend any good preforming, but reasonably priced alternatives to the seagate 296? How does the Conner 100Mb compare? The Adaptec 1542 looks like the contoller to have! Thanks, Alan Barrow hplabs!hp-col!hpuagaa!km4ba!alan
neese@adaptex.UUCP (11/14/89)
>Can anyone recommend any good preforming, but reasonably priced alternatives >to the seagate 296? How does the Conner 100Mb compare? > >The Adaptec 1542 looks like the contoller to have! The Conner CP3100 is a slightly better performer than the Seagate, but be careful. The Conner has a problem with other devices that want to arbitrate for the SCSI bus. In this capacity range the best behaved drive is the Quantum PRO80S. I recommend it highly. It is not the cheapest in its capacity range, but it is the best value going. It also happens to be the best performing drive in its class. Bottom line: You can't do any better than the Quantum drive for a SCSI application. Roy Neese Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese merch!adaptex!neese
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (11/15/89)
In article <311@km4ba.UUCP> alan@km4ba.UUCP (Alan Barrow) writes: > >The Adaptec 1542 looks like the [SCSI] contoller to have! > The 1542(A) (and others, such as the WD, as far as I know) have a problem, in their current implementation, working together with 386^MAX (from Qualitas). In short, they DON'T work together. The technical support folks at Qualitas they are aware of the problem but that it has to be solved in the SCSI controller's BIOS routines. Something about properly identifying some buffer meory or something used by the controller that conflicts with whtat 386^MAX is trying to do. I've called the Adaptec SCSI guru a couple of times, leaving messages for a return call, but so far no response. I'll update this note when/IF I find out anything. Bottom line: I still use the 1542A, but I'm switching from 386^MAX to a slightly different scheme, using VM/386, and I'll set up one virtual machine to do the networking (the reason for needing 386^MAX in the first place is the ungodly amount of memory PC-NFS hogs). kEITHe
neese@adaptex.UUCP (11/16/89)
>> >>The Adaptec 1542 looks like the [SCSI] contoller to have! >> >The 1542(A) (and others, such as the WD, as far as I know) have a >problem, in their current implementation, working together with >386^MAX (from Qualitas). In short, they DON'T work together. > >The technical support folks at Qualitas they are aware of the >problem but that it has to be solved in the SCSI controller's BIOS >routines. Something about properly identifying some buffer meory or >something used by the controller that conflicts with whtat 386^MAX >is trying to do. The problem is the 1542 and WD7000 are bus masters and as such require physical addresses be passed in the INT13 call. With the 386 in virtual mode this can't happen. A dirty fix for Windows 386 was to do a driver that allocated an amount of memory as a buffer. The driver would then intercept the INT13 call and pass the address of the buffer to the 1540 and then when the command completed, move the data from the buffer to the funny address via a move string instruction. This works okay with Windows as Windows doesn't move the lower 640K of memory around, so the logical address in the lower 640K is also the physical address. This is not the case with 386^MAX. It moves everything around and thus the driver has no physical address to use. There is absolutely nothing that can be done in the BIOS of the 1540 and the WD7000 to correct this. There are two ways to correct this problem. One is the application could be made to pass a physical address to the adapter BIOS. This is fairly trivial for the application to do this as it has full access to the 386 page registers. BIOS's do not have privilege to these registers. The other way is to standardize on a call that a BIOS might make that would return a physical address. There is currently a move in this direction, but I don't know the status of this. >I've called the Adaptec SCSI guru a couple of times, leaving >messages for a return call, but so far no response. I'll update >this note when/IF I find out anything. My calls are all screened. If you are not a OEM or distributor in my region, then I cannot return a call, and probably won't even get the message. I worked this deal out with my boss. I can respond to the net and can E-mail as well, but I cannot accept calls from those that I do not have responsibility for. I already get up to 60 calls a day from the people I am responsible for. I do not want to sound like a horse's-ass, but I don't make the rules. >Bottom line: I still use the 1542A, but I'm switching from 386^MAX >to a slightly different scheme, using VM/386, and I'll set up one >virtual machine to do the networking (the reason for needing 386^MAX >in the first place is the ungodly amount of memory PC-NFS hogs). Be sure to ask the VM386 folks if they have gotten the support for the 1542. They were working on it last I had heard. Roy Neese Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese merch!adaptex!neese
keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson) (11/21/89)
In article <6100031@adaptex> neese@adaptex.UUCP writes: >>I've called the Adaptec SCSI guru a couple of times, leaving >>messages for a return call, but so far no response. I'll update >>this note when/IF I find out anything. >My calls are all screened. If you are not a OEM or distributor in my >region, then I cannot return a call, and probably won't even get the >message. I worked this deal out with my boss. I can respond to the >net and can E-mail as well, but I cannot accept calls from those that >I do not have responsibility for. I already get up to 60 calls a day >from the people I am responsible for. I do not want to sound like a >horse's-ass, but I don't make the rules. For the record, (and I've emailed to Roy about this, too) I wasn't trying to call Roy but someone else in Adaptec's SCSI interface engineering department. I didn't include the other person's name in my posting specifically to save him from getting umpteen calls a day asking "how do I put the jumpers on my card" that I know would result. I very thankful for the responses we get from Roy; I was surprised, actually, that he had the time to answer my posting. kEITHe