csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod ) (10/05/90)
Hi, we had a discussion in a subnet group about the Seagate ST296N SCSI drives. First the facts: The ST296N is not always able to run interleave 1:1 under all circumstances. We are not yet sure whether this is due to one of the following reasons: - host adapter too slow (after all, the ST296N has a rather tiny sector buffer of 4 KB; with 34 sectors per track this seems tight, and the host adapter must get the data out in time) - different ST296N versions Seagate Germany says that all Seagate SCSI drives support 1:1. Apparantly, there are real-world situations where a ST296N won't do that. Has anybody gathered more information on this subject? Any official comments from Seagate in the past? Previous discussions in this group? Tnx for your help. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Claus Brod, Am Felsenkeller 2, Things. Take. Time. D-8772 Marktheidenfeld, West Germany (Piet Hein) csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de ----------------------------------------------------------------------
jeh@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (10/07/90)
In article <3153@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>, csbrod@medusa.informatik.uni-erlangen.de (Claus Brod ) writes: > [...] > Seagate Germany says that all Seagate SCSI drives support 1:1. Apparantly, > there are real-world situations where a ST296N won't do that. Has anybody > gathered more information on this subject? Any official comments from > Seagate in the past? Previous discussions in this group? There was some discussion on this in comp.sys.atari.st and .ibm.pc about this some time ago. Seems that older versions of the drive either won't do 1:1 interleave, or will fail in nasty ways if you try it. The last message I have indicates that returning the drive to get it upgraded to ROM version 8 and RAM version 12 will make it work properly. This is in a message from Sept 6 1989... It might be the controller, if you're using an ST-01 controller. I seem to recall that they max out at about 700-800 kB/s, which is somewhere close to the data rate on a ST-296N. --jh -- John Hood, Mann Library, Cornell University jhood@albert.mannlib.cornell.edu, jeh@crnlvax5.bitnet, uunet!biar!jhood