larry@macom1.UUCP (Larry Taborek) (11/04/89)
I am in the market for a SCSI adapter card for a hard disk. I haven't purchased either yet, but I have some thoughts and I was wondering if anyone could give me some insight or experience with: The Adaptec AHA-1542A Adapter card, which I'm told supports SCSI drives and both 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 inch drives on all denisties. I'm told that it supports a 1:1 interlieve, and is faster then the Western Digitals FASST cards. Is it a good controller? Is there anything better without going above the $500.00 price barrier? I was talking to a gentleman named Carl at another mail order house who told me that the ST-296n Segate SCSI drives have a poor purformance record when used for extended periods of time. This was the drive that I was thinking about using. 84MB, pretty cheap and SCSI. Carl said that if it was used for an hour or two and then shut down, it was fine, but for 24 hour a day operation, it failed too often. Anyone with any experience with this, either good or bad? Anyone recommend another cheap fast SCSI drive or vendor? Thanks Larry -- Larry Taborek ..!uunet!grebyn!macom1!larry Centel Federal Systems larry@macom1.UUCP 11400 Commerce Park Drive Reston, VA 22091-1506 My views do not reflect those of Centel 703-758-7000
neese@adaptex.UUCP (11/05/89)
>The Adaptec AHA-1542A Adapter card, which I'm told supports SCSI >drives and both 5-1/4 and 3-1/2 inch drives on all denisties. >I'm told that it supports a 1:1 interlieve, and is faster then >the Western Digitals FASST cards. Is it a good controller? Is >there anything better without going above the $500.00 price >barrier? It does support 1:1, and all the floppy combinations. As far as being faster than the WD FASST cards, I can't say. That's what I have been told. If you are talking about $500.00 for the drive and adapter, I have heard street prices of $279.00 for the adapter, but if you are looking for a cheap SCSI combo you can get it but at the expense of performance. If you are going to only use HD's off the SCSI interface, then a better solution would be a good RLL controller and certified drive. If you don't care about performance then you can get the ST02/Seagate combination. Again, if all you care about is a hard drive and won't be runnning anything other than MS-DOS. I would not use the ST02/Seagate combination as I like performance and reliability. I want to know my HD is going to work every day and not have to worry about it. I hate to sound negative about the Seagate solution, but I have seen many complaints about it on the net and I also know the drive very well. The best 1542 combination for MS-DOS is a 1542A and a Quantum PRO40 (40 MB) or PRO80 (80 MB). This may is not the cheapest combination, but it is the best performing combination around, in this capacity range. Roy Neese Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer UUCP @ {texbell,attctc}!cpe!adaptex!neese merch!adaptex!neese