*BSD News Article 34114


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From: james@hermes.cybernetics.net (James Robinson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: SCASI or IDE disk?
Date: 10 Aug 1994 20:43:32 GMT
Organization: James' FreeBSD Machine
Lines: 24
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <32be5k$bln@jabba.cybernetics.net>
References: <RW2ystE.dysonj@delphi.com>
Reply-To: james@hermes.cybernetics.net
NNTP-Posting-Host: hermes.cybernetics.net
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I'll agree, and I doubt that you will find anyone that says otherwise. If
you do not mind the initial extra cost overhead (drives cost a bit more,
and the controller costs quite a bit more than an IDE controller), you
would really be doing yourself a favor by going SCSI. Less "BIOS translation"
worries, _much_ better response / CPU loading via bus-mastering DMA, etc.
Plus, you can chain up to 7 devices off of your one SCSI controller. 7
gig drives (not gonna happen w/IDE-current. Anyone know about the new
IDE specs?), SCSI CDROM drives, scanners, tape backups, etc. Just the
other day I grabbed the external SCSI 4mm DAT tape backup unit we have
lying aroud work and backed up my paltry 340 meg maxtor. Just hooked it
up and ran tar. Had I not gone SCSI, I would have had to have opened
up the case to plug in some sort of floppy drive controller hosted tape
backup unit (which we don't have lying around).

You get what you pay for.

---
: James Robinson :   james@hermes.cybernetics.net ::See the screaming hot black
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