herbie@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Andrew Herbert) (07/10/90)
I am after some hard facts regarding the various scsi adapters available for the ISA (AT) bus. The attributes that come to mind are that come to mind are of a card : * What is the (maximum) SCSI to AT bus transfer rate? * What special features does the card have, and how does this assist throughput? (e.g. does it have an on-board micro to handle scsi transactions?) * Is it compatible with DOS, OS/2 and/or UNIX (ESIX in particular)? * Does the above compatibility arise from special drivers that come with the card, or from built-in operating system support?
herbie@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Andrew Herbert) (07/10/90)
[Sorry about the previous posting - the newsreader sent it off when I pressed ctrl-c! :-( Here is the full version.] I am after some hard facts regarding the various scsi adapters available for the ISA (AT) bus. The attributes of a card that come to mind are: * What is the (maximum) scsi to AT bus transfer rate? * Does it support synchronous scsi transactions? * What special features does the card have, and how do these assist throughput? (e.g. does it have an on-board micro to handle scsi transactions?) * Is it compatible with DOS, OS/2 and/or UNIX (ESIX in particular)? * Does the above compatibility arise from special drivers that come with the card, or from built-in operating system support? * What is the approximate price? I would greatly appreciate information on any cards by the following manufacturers: Adaptec (e.g. AHA1542B) DTC Future Domain Western Digital (e.g. WD7000-FAST-2) I am also interested in products from companies not mentioned above. Please mail details to: herbie@bruce.cs.monash.edu.au I will summarise to the net ASAP. Thanks muchly, Andrew
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (07/12/90)
In article <2628@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> herbie@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Andrew Herbert) writes: >I am after some hard facts regarding the various scsi adapters available for >the ISA (AT) bus. The attributes that come to mind are that come to mind are >of a card : I have an Adaptec AHA1542B. I am very happy with it. It supports SCSI plu 2 floppy disks. (The 1540 is SCSI only) * What is the (maximum) SCSI to AT bus transfer rate? This card supports up to 10Mbytes / sec, although most computers won't tolerate it. This is settable via switches or through S/W. Your performance is more limited by actual disk throughput however. * What special features does the card have, and how does this assist throughput? (e.g. does it have an on-board micro to handle scsi transactions?) It supports synchronous SCSI. It has onboard CPU to map disk specific geometries to appear like standard MFM controller/disk. * Is it compatible with DOS, OS/2 and/or UNIX (ESIX in particular)? Yes, it is fully compatible. Because of the above mentioned feature, it need not appear any different to the CPU than any MFM controller. A specific driver may improve performance slightly in some circumstances. * Does the above compatibility arise from special drivers that come with the card, or from built-in operating system support? No drivers are needed. Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254