bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (BOSTATER,Scott) (08/11/89)
I have recently purchased a Seagate ST296N (84 Mbyte, 28 ms, 1:1 interleave)
hard disk and a Western Digital WDSCS-FASTATXT2 X3 SCSI controller capable
of upto 650 kbyte/sec transfer rate. I'm running them in a 20 MHz 80386 clone
(AMI bios, C&T chipset). I am getting only 56 kbyte/sec transfer rate out
of the drive. All of the hard disk performance/diagnostic software that I have
fails on the drive because its a SCSI and is accessed through a device driver.
Does anyone have any experience with this controller and/or hard disk? I
would hate to think that I spent $500+ on a relatively large, extermely slow
hard disk. Does anyone know if there's a program similar to SPINRITE that
can handle a SCSI drive? Should I try a low level format with a 2:1 interleave
(groan... I have 50 MB of data on it already)?
Any help would be gratefully appreciated,
--
Scott Bostater GTRI/RAIL/RAD (Ga. Tech)
"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him" -Ps 62.1
uucp: ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!bb16
Internet: bb16@prism.gatech.edubowden@gumby.cc.wmich.edu (Michael L. Bowden) (08/16/89)
I just bought one of these ST296N drives myself (HDI, right?), and have a little background information for you. Apparently, these drives are used quite a bit in the Atari ST world. The stories that I hear are that some of the drives will do 900K/sec, others will only do about 450K/sec. The people that are getting 900K/sec have version 7 ROMs in their drives, the 450K/sec group have version 8 ROMs. What happened was that (supposedly) Seagate purposely slowed down the drive so that it would work with the Macintosh, thus crippling it for everyone else in the world. It means that the best you can do is a 2:1 interleave, unless you can come up with a v7 ROM somewhere. If you do, let me know...I'd like to borrow it! I ran CORETEST on mine when I got it, and (by accident) ended up interleaving it at the Diskmanager default of 3, then re-ran it with 2. If you want the figures, I can mail them to you. Anyway, I'm getting 450K/sec, so overall it's about twice as fast as the old CMI 20meg I had before...not too shabby. Still, it irks me that I can't squeeze that extra potential out of it. By the way, I'm running a 12mhz 286 from Computer Products United.
allred@ut-emx.UUCP (Kevin L. Allred) (08/16/89)
> The stories that I hear are that some of the drives will do 900K/sec, > others will only do about 450K/sec. The people that are getting 900K/sec > have version 7 ROMs in their drives, the 450K/sec group have version 8 > ROMs. What happened was that (supposedly) Seagate purposely slowed down > the drive so that it would work with the Macintosh, thus crippling it for > everyone else in the world. It means that the best you can do is a 2:1 The speed result you've seen match those given by my 386sx at both 16 and 8MHz. You're the first person I've seen who has suggested the problem is in the drive and not the ST0x SCSI adaptor. My drive is brand new -- manufactured in May; so I'm pretty sure it would have the most recent BIOS. I think I'll call Seagate and try and verify this. If you get a v7 rom and can prove this is true, I bet we can drum up a lot of letters and phone calls to Seagate suggesting they make the better BIOS available to us speed hungry users. I talked to Shamrock (see Computer Shopper) on the phone before buying mine, and they claimed that their 16MHz was able to attain 900 KBPS using the ST02 and ST296N. I wonder if they have a costom BIOS. I ended up buying my drive from Treasure Chest and saving $70, so I don't have one from Shamrock to know if their drive is standard issue or not. -- Kevin Allred allred@emx.cc.utexas.edu allred@ut-emx.UUCP