KUO@oregon.uoregon.edu (Shijong Kuo) (03/16/90)
In article <24@psmsd.UUCP>, pmartin@psmsd.UUCP (Paul Martin) writes: > In article <868@edstip.EDS.COM>, ohrnb@edstip.EDS.COM (Erik Ohrnberger) writes: >> >> Does anyone have any experience with a Perstore disk controller >> cards? >> > > I am using a Perstor with a seagate 4096 80 meg and it works great! > This combination gives me approx 146 megs. The card acts like an RLL > by putting 31 sectors per track as opposed to 17 with an MFM on a > seagate 4096. On a 20 mhz 386 I can only use a 3:1 interleave giving > me throughput of 360k a second. A standard MFM on this machine uses a > 2:1 interleave getting 260k a sec transfer rate (according to spinrite). > As you can see, the card is superior to a standard MFM or RLL controllers. > If you are going to use Xenix, be sure to get the 16FN perstor. This > is an AT style hard/floppy controller for networks. The only caution I > have is make sure that your case for the drive has good ventilation. > The perstor will cause your drive to get hotter than normal thus causing > a failure. This is because the drive spins faster under the perstor. > I ran into this problem after having my drive fail. I moved it to an > external case and it has work flawlessly ever since. My mini tower case > has a poor design for allowing good circulation of cool air. I also > have a full complement of boards and memory. A friend of mine is > using 2 perstor controllers (1 in an AT and the other in a 386) with > 2 seagate 4096 drives hanging off of each controller. He has never > had a problem, and he bought his first perstor over 2 years ago. > Also be aware that the controller is not an MFM or an RLL so programs > like the new spinrite II don't like it. This is the only package that > I know of that doesn't like the perstor. You can even low level format > with disk manager when using a perstor. I am running both Xenix/386 > and dos 3.3 with no problems at all. > >> 7-15 Mb/sec. How does Perstor achieve 9 MB/sec? and how reliable are > > I guess you would need a 33mhz or faster machine to be able to use 1:1 > interleave. I for one have never seen a perstor do 9mb/sec. > > I hope this helps! > > -- > +--------[ Paul Martin at P.S.M. Software Development ]--------+ > | Smart: pmartin@psmsd.UUCP | "Yes I am serious, and don't | > | Dumb: ...uccba!psmsd!pmartin | call me Shirley!" | > +-------------------------------+------------------------------+ I use a ps160-fn on an 10mhz, the perstor software determined it could support 2:1 interleave on a st251 (40ms). And coretest reported about 400kb/sec transfer rate. I imagine on a 386 ,it should be able to support 1:1 interleave. btw, I don't recall seeing anywhere in perstor's manual that controller makes the disk spin faster than 3600 rpm. kuo@oregon.uoregon.edu