guy@contact.uucp (Guy Lemieux) (09/07/90)
In <3391@awdprime.UUCP> ron@woan (Ronald S. Woan) writes: >The before mentioned drive/controller combinations have been >advertised in Computer Shopper for ~$399. That's pretty good for an >83.9MB 28ms drive. So what's the catch? Do the controllers handle only >a single device, i.e. no daisy chaining? Is the 8-bit controller a >bottleneck on 16-bit busses? Anyone out there with one of these? The ST01 and ST02 host adaptors cost something like $40. They are very cheap and very SLOW. To top it off, even if you got a fast controller, The Seagate ST2xxN drives have a terrible transfer rate... somewhere around 250k/second. Don't do it. Invest some money into an IDE drive if you want a cheap price. Otherwise, get the AHA1542b and one of those CDC drives (Oh, Seagate bought out CDC, so they are now Seagate drives). Guy guy@contact.uucp
ssingh@watserv1.waterloo.edu ($anjay [+] $ingh - Indy Studz) (09/08/90)
In article <3391@awdprime.UUCP> woan@peyote.cactus.org writes: >The before mentioned drive/controller combinations have been >advertised in Computer Shopper for ~$399. That's pretty good for an >83.9MB 28ms drive. So what's the catch? Do the controllers handle only >a single device, i.e. no daisy chaining? Is the 8-bit controller a >bottleneck on 16-bit busses? Anyone out there with one of these? > First, the terminology. ST01/02 are host adapters, not controllers. The 296N (N = iNtelligent) has an integrated controller. But in order to interface to the AT Bus which does not meet the SCSI definition, you need a middle man, to massage the signals sent from the SCSI device, so that the AT bus can read it properly. This is the purpose of a host adapter. Catches for the ST 01/02? I found some out last year. To summarize, the ST 01/02 is an obsolete Future Domain design that Seagate bought the rights to. Under DOS, you should have no problems using it. It's performance is similar to an ST-506 RLL drive. It does what it is supposed to do. The ST 01 is only for the hard drive; the 02 handles floppies as well. It cannot handle more. Now if you decide to run UNIX on your PC, you are in trouble. No vendor of UNIX supports the ST 01/02 host adapter. It was for this reason that I exchanged my ST 02 for an Adaptec AHA1542b. But I'm far from an engineer or an expert on the SCSI definition. So I am having problems with some particulars of the jumper settings. If you have previously installed adapter cards you should be okay. But this is more my lack of skill than a design oversight. In any event it will be worth the hassle, because the Adaptec is a widely supported SCSI host adapter by major UNIX vendors. And even if you do not run UNIX, once the DMA speed has been set for the best performance (I'm still stuck on this one), it should significantly outperform the ST 02 because it is a 16-bit card. One last thing, I believe the Jan/Feb issues of Byte had a thorough treatment of SCSI in the dept. called Under the Hood. Or was it In Depth? Anyway, I hope this helps. -- "No one had the guts... until now..." |-"psychotic" $anjay [+] $ingh ssingh@watserv1.[u]waterloo.{edu|cdn}/[ca] -| watserv1%rn alt.[CENSORED BY JOHNNY WONG, THE MAN WHO PROTECTS ME FROM MYSELF] !two-live-crew!cindy's_torment!bambina_child!ALT.[group]!Public_Enemy!N.W.A.!
jhs@hpfinote.HP.COM (John Stanback) (09/08/90)
I've had an ST296N drive with the ST01 adapter for about a year and it has worked flawlessly. I formatted with a 2:1 interleave and Coretest gives me a data transfer rate of 450K which seems pretty good for the price. John Stanback jhs@hpfire.HP.COM