blgardne@esunix.UUCP (Blaine Gardner) (06/08/89)
I've got a Control Data Wren III (150 meg SCSI) drive hooked up to the
A2090A controller. Diskperf is showing 530-580 Kbytes/sec, but of course
this drops to nearly nothing if there's lots of video DMA going on. This
happens far more than I thought it would, and even Patch2090 isn't that
much help.
The Microbotics Hardframe seems like the best alternative, but I'd like
to hear from people that own it. (Pointers to magazine reviews would
also be appreciated.)
What kind of Diskperf speed do you get? (Can the Hardframe handle 1:1
interleave from an 18 mS drive?)
How does the FFS boot and the automount of all partitions without a
mountlist work?
Is it a "true" SCSI controller, or one of those halfway jobs that will
only work with a few "consumer grade" drives?
Any video DMA slowdown problems like the A2090A?
How well does it work with the A2620 card? (I just got one last week.)
And is Amix a possibility with the Hardframe, or is this A2090A only?
The A2090A will not cold-boot the CDC Wren III because it takes too long
to spin up (like the Seagate SCSI drives). Can the Hardframe cold-boot a
drive that takes 10-15 seconds to spin up?
Is there anything you DON'T like about the Hardframe?
And most important, is anyone actually using one with the CDC Wren III
SCSI drive? (The recent reports of problems with some combinations of
huge drives and some controllers has me concerned.)
Any responses are appreciated, and if you e-mail me, I'll be happy to
post a summary of responses. (Let me know if you do not want your reply
included in the summary.)
Oh, are there any other controllers I should consider?
--
Blaine Gardner @ Evans & Sutherland 580 Arapeen Drive, SLC, Utah 84108
Here: utah-cs!esunix!blgardne {ucbvax,allegra,decvax}!decwrl!esunix!blgardne
"Nobody will ever need more than 64K." "Nobody needs multitasking on a PC."