shwake@raysnec.UUCP (Ray Shwake) (09/05/90)
In article <26@raysnec.UUCP> I asked: > > Anyone have experience with Adaptec's ESDI series? Just received >an info pack covering their entire PC line, including the ACB-232x series. >How does this compare - cost, performance, compatibility - with, say, >the Western Digital WD1007V or other such controllers? I'm especially >interested in supporting some flavor of 386/486 UN*X. From: Doug Pintar <uunet!ism.isc.com!dougp> Organization: Interactive Systems Corp., Boulder CO Interactive Unix (formerly 386/ix) supports the Adaptec 232x cards. In fact, the HPDD 'athd' module was originally written for them, and then modified for the quirks of the WD boards as well as others. I like them a little better than the WD equivalents for a couple of reasons. 1) they seem to be a little faster at getting commands started up, and 2) you can use them at BOTH secondary I/O addresses AND interrupts. The WD cards used to (don't know if they still do) allow you to select the secondary address, but no dice on the interrupt. I have actually run systems with 2 Adaptec controllers and multiple drives. From: Jim Bevier - J B Systems <uunet!ico.isc.com!iscden!jbev> I am not familiar with bench, but I recently got "bonnie" from the net and gave it a try. Performance is about like the sun on my 386/25. It reads/writes a 100mb (yes 100mb) file in several modes. It even forks 3 copies of its random disk test to really hammer on the disk. The system throughput (collectively) was about 1340 kb/sec. I think some of the other tests were cpu/buffer dependent and more memory on my system would help (I have 4mb, soon to be 8mb). The biggest winner with the controller is the dos/unix jumper. The sequential read-ahead feature allows fast task loading on the SCO unix file system. From: uunet!hlwpq.att.com!marz (Martin Zam) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories I run an Adaptec 2322B with my Miniscribe 9380E under ISC Unix. I had some problems getting it working initially. There are some potential installation problems related to Low level formatting directly off the controller card. Also, I have been repeatedly warned by Adaptec to turn off the read-ahead cache if I am running UNIX. They never gave me a real explanation, but claim UNIX gets flakey if the read-ahead cache is turned on. Don't get the impression that I have had reliability problems with this combo. I must say that once working, the combo has been rock solid for over a year now.