pthomas@arecibo.aero.org (05/30/91)
I am finally planning to move out of the MFM world. After a failed bout with the Perstor 16-FN (board was returned to Perstor twice for repairs, and consistently failed again after two to three months each time), I have decided it is time to move to a more standard interface. My question--in your experience what would be the best choice to use on a 10 MHz 0 ws AT in a 16 bit slot. I need to run one drive of a minimum of 80 MB and one HD 5.25 floppy. Expandability is not a requirement--but it never hurts. Things I'm looking for are: low price, reliability, and performance (through- put and access time). I'll need to buy both the controller and the drive, so consider the cost of controllers when discussing price. I am particularly interested in information from people who have tried more than one type of interface. Thanks for your help! --Pete
zampetti@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Marc Zampetti ) (05/30/91)
Good for you. Moving out of MFM and RLL is the best thing you can do when you are upgrading. The choice of drive you want will depend upon the size you are willing to go for. If you want something from 40 to 150 Mb, then IDE is the way to go. It is fast, usually 15-20ms and fairly cheap, I've seen 120Mb IDE kits for about $500. You can connect two IDE drives to the same system, but you have to be careful about compatibility, becuase IDE is not completely standard. SCSI is just as fast as IDE, but will cost a little more for the same stoarage range. But, if you want greater than 150Mb, SCSI will probably be cheaper. The good thing about SCSI is that one controller can usually drive up to 8 drives. You can daisy chain them, even external drives, fairly easily. ESDI is the best for very high capacity, greater than 600Mb. This usually come with fast caching controllers. They are the best cost wise once you get into the high capacity area. I hope this helps. Marc Zampetti zampetti@eniac.seas.upenn.edu