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From: michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Ultimate BSD PC Hardware Setup
Date: 23 Sep 1995 06:12:41 GMT
Organization: HeadCandy Associates... Sweets for the lobes.
Lines: 99
Message-ID: <MICHAELV.95Sep22231241@MindBender.HeadCandy.com>
References: <43df2f$id@future.internexus.net>
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<MICHAELV.95Sep18161642@mindbender.headcandy.com>
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NNTP-Posting-Host: mindbender.seanet.com
In-reply-to: bcrwhims@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca's message of Wed, 20 Sep 1995 18:38:33 GMT
In article <DF7vs9.1zL@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> bcrwhims@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Carsten Whimster) writes:
In article <MICHAELV.95Sep18161642@mindbender.headcandy.com>,
Michael L. VanLoon <michaelv@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> wrote:
| I will not support Adaptec because of their Draconian policies. I
| have nothing against the performance of their cards.
Could you elaborate on this, please? I was considering an Adaptec, but
I will listen to you first :)
The best thing I can tell you is simply to go through the archives for
this and the other *bsd groups. Not very appealing, eh? :-) What I'm
going to recount is simply a summary of many mixed memories, so the
archives would be more accurate.
Honestly, I post about this about every three months or so. I was not
one of the parties involved, directly. I read most of what I'll
recount in these newsgroups.
My only involvement is that I needed to improve the NetBSD BusLogic
SCSI driver a little under two years ago. I called BusLogic, told
them what I was doing, and they immediately threw a free Technical
Reference Manual with complete programming specs for the BusLogic
controllers in the mail. I was impressed by their openness and
helpfulness.
The other parties who were trying to get info out of Adaptec on their
new 2xxx line of controllers had nothing but horror stories to tell.
Adaptec people would just plain string them through hoops over and
over again. Being just plain hostile, and at no time ever giving the
impression they had any desire to release something unless under paid
NDA. And even then, they kept arguing over and over again that, even
if you did have the hardware specs, you shouldn't program to it, and
should just run their firmware drivers instead. Which meant buying a
firmware library that they could invalidate with an update at any
time. (Correct me Julian(?) if any of my points are off the mark.)
Coupled with that was some points Terry Lambert (I believe) brought up
recently. Where Adaptec didn't even bother to show up for some big
industry get-together because it wasn't important enough to them
(i.e. it wouldn't pad their pockets).
Basically, I have (many times over) seen no sign that Adaptec has even
the slightest inclination to help out the small free unix community
(or any small community without enough mass to make a difference on
their bottom line). Their entire 2xxx line is just proof of this.
The entire line was designed *specifically* to isolate the hardware
under a proprietary firmware layer that only Adaptec has the rights
to, unless you pay a huge NDA. And even then, the discourage it
because they want to be able to change their hardware at will, and
just ship a new firmware library with it.
There were some Linux SCSI developer who some how got on the good side
of someone at Adaptec, and managed to get the necessary manuals. I
believe this is what all the current free unix 2xxx drivers are based
from. From all the other horror stories I've heard, however, I
believe it was a fluke, and it would be difficult to repeat. Not only
that, but there's always the possibility that these drivers will just
break when Adaptec makes their first hardware change in the card that
they say is the whole reason for their firmware layer (since the free
unix drivers don't use the firmware library -- they work directly with
the proprietary hardware interface).
Anyway, that's my take on it. For the same reason people used to say
not to buy Diamond video cards, don't buy Adaptec. Even if you
ignored any implied malice in all this, and just looked at the
features of the three (Adaptec, BusLogic, and NCR) cards and drivers,
Adaptec loses. Theirs is the only proprietary interface, that is
supposed to break the next time Adaptec updates a hardware design on
their SCSI cards. The BusLogic is a completely open, well-documented,
and consistent interface (same API across all cards), and the NCR just
plain costs less, plus the benefits of the BusLogic.
And what does all this difficulty buy Adaptec? They say it protects
them from competitors cloning their cards. If hardware companies
really really wanted to, they could reverse engineer the thing. So it
only inconveniences the users. And, the performance of their
competitors is almost as good, anyway. Most of the benchmarks I've
seen put them in the same league. Furthermore, the BusLogic boards
are made every bit as well as the Adaptec boards (actually, I think my
BT747s is a much better board than my AHB-1740 [both fast EISA SCSI-2
boards]). And the BusLogic boards usually sell for a little less than
the Adaptec. NCR boards are made by OEMs, but the ones I've seen
have been well made. And they sell for a *lot* less than the
Adaptecs.
So, the question isn't "why *not* buy Adaptec?" It finally comes down
to "considering the other options, *why* *buy* Adaptec?" I can't
think of a single reason.
--
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Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, HP300, Sun3, Sun4,
DEC PMAX (MIPS), DEC Alpha, PC532
NetBSD ports in progress: VAX, Atari 68k, others...
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