krowitz@RICHTER.MIT.EDU (David Krowitz) (03/25/89)
The new disk controller for the 696 MB disk drives is a multifunction controller which also has an SCSI port. Apollo's new 8mm tape drive runs off of the SCSI port, so presumably I could just add the drive to my DN3500 which already has the big disk. But ... does anyone know how well this works? Our DN560 also has a multifunction controller which handles the cartridge tape drive in addition to the winchester disk, and when the tape drive is spinning the system can't access the disk (I believe the controller only has a single DMA channel) which makes the machine *really* slow when the tape is being used. Does the SCSI port on the Western Digital controller have a seperate set of control registers and a seperate DMA channel, or is the controller time-shared between the two devices like on the DN560? -- David Krowitz krowitz@richter.mit.edu (18.83.0.109) krowitz%richter@eddie.mit.edu krowitz%richter@athena.mit.edu krowitz%richter.mit.edu@mitvma.bitnet (in order of decreasing preference)