pshen@athena.mit.edu (Paul Shen) (02/01/91)
I am planning to purchase a 386 system. I have few question on the harddisk controller card and display. 1. What is IDE contoller? how does it compare with MFM, SCSI and others? Can I use MFM disk on that controller? And Can SCO-UNIX run with this controller? 2. How is SONY 1304 monitor, in comparison with NEC 3D? I heared it is a in non-interlace mode, when it is in 1024x700 mode. Can I use ATI VGA wonder card for it?}i Thanks, Paul
jdb@reef.cis.ufl.edu (Brian K. W. Hook) (02/01/91)
In article <1991Jan31.182420.16161@athena.mit.edu> pshen@athena.mit.edu (Paul Shen) writes: >I am planning to purchase a 386 system. I have few question on the >harddisk controller card and display. >1. What is IDE contoller? how does it compare with MFM, SCSI et. al. >Can I use MFM disk on that controller? And Can SCO-UNIX run with this >controller? IDE stands fro Integrated/Intelligent Driver Electronics, depending on who you talk to. Basically, there is no such thing as an IDE *controller*. An IDE hard drive has the controller built onto the disk drive itself. That board you use to plug into the motherboard (if the motherboard doesn't have pins coming out of it directly, as many today do) is only an interface board. IDE is considered quite good, and almost all new hard drives >30MB and <120MB bought with a system will be IDE since IDE is: a. cheap b. cheap c. pretty darned fast d. pretty darned reliable e. small (most are 3.5" HH hard drives...some >200MB) f. did I mention cheap? I prefer IDE over MFM, RLL, SCSI, etc. since: MFM drives tend to be big, and with today's baby cases small is small is a good thing. Also, MFM has a max data transfer rate of around 500-600 kb/sec. MFM also tends to be slow (none faster than 28ms track-to-track seek, as far as I know). RLL drives, like the MFM, tend to be big, although the Seagate ST1xxR series are pretty decent. The fastest I have seen is about 26ms, and most max DTRs are around 800 bs/sec realistically, and my system with an Adaptec 2372B with a Seagate ST277R-1 28ms hd does about 725kb/sec. SCSI is theoretically faster, but it has an 8-bit bandwidth, and alot of the speed is lost when you do the logical to physical translation through the controller. Also, SCSI is a very loose standard on PCs....one SCSI device has a good chance of not working with another. ESDI is real nice and fast and all, with up to 10mb/sec transfer rate on the real expensive boards. And that is there problem. They are extremely fast, some as low as 12.5ms access times on the big guys (660MB), but they are about 25% more expensive than IDE. If you need the speed, this is the way to go. As for MFM disk with IDE controller, well, I just explained that. Also, they physically don't fit (MFM uses two edge connectors, and the IDE uses one pinned connector). In other words, IDE is the drive and controller together. MFM you buy the two separately. SCO UNIX and IDE? Don't know. Should work, but you should call SCO first. I believe that IDE emulates the ST506 interface, and SCO is ST506 compatible. >2. How is SONY 1304 monitor, in comparison with NEC 3D? I heared it is a >in non-interlace mode, when it is in 1024x700 mode. Can I use ATI VGA >wonder card for it?}i Well, we just had a huge discussion on this board about the SONY/SEIKO TRINITRON tube based montiros, and everyone pretty much agreed that they are real nice monitors, except: a barely discernable shadow, 1 pixel high, is discernable about 2/3rds of the way down on the screen. 1024x768 mode is available, but it doesn't really help on a 14" monitor. Brian