peters@beltrix.UUCP (Peter Sleggs) (05/20/91)
Some weeks ago I asked for comments on the Always IN2000 and Adaptec IN2000
I got very little response (Rick & Roy I sent mail as requested but have
no idea if you got it).
any comment or suggestions before I commit $ to this project...??
We plan to update a Micronics 386/20 system to have a SCSI drive and at a
later date run some flavour of UNIX, currently we are using DOS & Desqview.
The future plans include a motherboard update to something a little faster
but lack of disk space is crippling the system at the moment.
All the info I have been able to get out of the local Disti's is a
1 or 2 page propaganda sheet. (we will be dealing direct with the local
distis)
Not having used a SCSI drive before we are trying to avoid as many of the
pitfalls up front.
Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Peter Sleggs
Bellatrix Systems If vendors who are on the net want to
2597 Altadena Court send data it would be welcome
Mississauga, ONT
Canada L5K 1G1
Thanks
peter
{blister|torag|skypod}!beltrix!peters or peters@torag.uucp
OR as a last resort lsuc!canrem!peter.sleggsiverson@xstor.com (Tim Iverson) (05/25/91)
In article <8R6921w162w@beltrix.UUCP> peters@beltrix.UUCP (Peter Sleggs) writes: >Some weeks ago I asked for comments on the Always IN2000 and Adaptec IN2000 >[...] >any comment or suggestions before I commit $ to this project...?? I would avoid Always like the plague. Mostly this is due to some shady marketoid engineering they did in their BIOS. In order to cause CoreTest (and other disk benchies) to report artificially high value for transfer rate, they disable *all* interrupts during data transfer. This stops the timer from ticking and thus causes CoreTest to think the transfer took less time than it actually did. What really got me mad was that they actually tried to palm this sucker off to us as a fast board, saying that it would speed up slow drives. It doesn't, it just slows down the benchie. Always is sadly lacking in integrity, both in engineering (turning off all interrupts is real bad) and marketing (saying it does do something they *know* doesn't do is not nice). >We plan to update a Micronics 386/20 system to have a SCSI drive and at a >later date run some flavour of UNIX, currently we are using DOS & Desqview. Normally I would recomend a bus mastering host adapter for UNIX, but some ISA motherboards, notably micronics and mylex, cannot handle the style of 1st party DMA that these boards use. *IF* your motherboard can handle the DMA, then I would recomend an Adaptec 1542B or a BusTek 540 (faster, more reliable 1542 clone). Almost all PC unixes support 1540 host adapters out of the box. Some also support the WD7000. None that I know of support Always. Out of the box support is critical if you intend to generate a new SCSI only system from scratch; i.e. gotta have a driver installed in order to run your system so you can link in the driver you need to run your system. Not quite Q.E.D. :-> >Not having used a SCSI drive before we are trying to avoid as many of the >pitfalls up front. Try to go with the 1542 if at all possible (get one and run the BIOS DMA test on your motherboard to see if it will work). With the 1542, you've got the single most well supported PC SCSI host adapter out there, so if you ever want to do something different or need a little help, you're bound to find what you need without much fuss. >Peter Sleggs >{blister|torag|skypod}!beltrix!peters or peters@torag.uucp >OR as a last resort lsuc!canrem!peter.sleggs - Tim Iverson iverson@xstor.com -/- uunet!xstor!iverson