shaker@dirt.cisco.com (Christopher J. Shaker) (02/04/91)
On Friday, after much trouble finding someone in the Bay Area who had one to sell, I became the proud owner of an AHA1740S10 EISA SCSI adapter and Maxstor 340S SCSI drive for my ALR Business VEISA. The controller and drive installed and configured in compatibility mode fairly easily, and worked well using the card's BIOS, with the card configured in its 'standard mode'. Software for its 'enhanced mode' doesn't seem to exist yet. I like the fact that both the 1740 and 340S support downloadable firmware. Using the 1740's BIOS drivers, running the disk benchmark option in Checkit 3.0 on top of DOS 4.01, without any disk cache, I got benchmarks of 658.3 KB/sec transfer rate, 18.5 ms average seek time, and 5.3 ms minimum seek time with the 1740 controller and Maxstor 340S. Contrast that with 478.5 KB/sec transfer rate, 24.5 ms average seek time, and 5.6 ms minimum seek time with the built-in IDE interface and Connor CP-3104. However, once it was done, the lid to my computer would no longer fit, because the ribbon cable attachment for the internal SCSI cable sticks up too far above the *very* tall card. Since this was my first EISA card, I don't know whether this is the card's fault, or the computer's fault. So, tommorow, I go back to the dealer to return the $749 card. I'm *very* bummed. Chris Shaker shaker@cisco.com