*BSD News Article 5875


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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!ncr-sd!sceard!mrm
From: mrm@sceard.Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy)
Subject: Re: 386BSD and IDE drives
Message-ID: <1992Oct1.150420.9211@sceard.Sceard.COM>
Reply-To: mrm@Sceard.COM (M.R.Murphy)
Organization: The Mole and Badger Association of Northern San Diego County
References: <Bv32LD.K9t@chinet.chi.il.us> <1992Sep25.184045.20768@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1729@optigfx.optigfx.com> <1992Sep30.030143.3446@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 15:04:20 GMT
Lines: 42

In article <1992Sep30.030143.3446@fcom.cc.utah.edu> terry@icarus.weber.edu writes:

>Well, Computer Shopper tends to have some companies that put out at the same
>prices for each type (although a little bit less)... are you sure you aren't
>quoting for drive+controller?  Admittedly, I like a bit higher capacity as a
>minimum, and IDE drives start ramping up at the higher Megs, while SCSI tends
>to keep a uniform increase in price until about 1.6Gig.  I can get a 1.3Gig
>11ms SCSI for about $1700 without controller.  That's four times the capacity
>of where you stopped counting at less than twice the price.
>

The prices that I quoted were for bare drive. The stores that sell the drives
will frequently throw in a noname IDE controller for free. They might throw in
an ST01 for free, too, if they knew what one is and had one :-)

BTW, an ST01 works OK, and can do 500-700KB/sec. As can IDE controllers and
drives. Good for the money. For the money, I still like a free Seagate 20MB
drive (ST225) and a free WD1003. It's enough to test 386bsd kernels, and the
price is right. It really does help to have one machine to develop and another
to test. It's a really good deal if you can find supported Ethernet interfaces
for $5 - $10 at liquidators, too.

>Most SCSI controllers *do* a bit more than most IDE controllers, so you aren't
>really comparing apples and apples.  One argument put for pro IDE geometry
>translation is that the losses are won back from controller caching.  A $10
>controller ca'nt be used for this argument.  I might as well argue the ST-01
>on pricing and the AHA1742 on speed.
>

In cheap IDE, the IDE controller doesn't cache. The *drive* caches. That helps.

>People!  Please send this information to Mike for summary!

Terry volunteers me to collect information about drives and controllers that
work with 386bsd as punishment for my disagreement with his clearly bizarre
contention that expensive SCSI systems are better than Yugos with blown head
gaskets. I'll do it. If you send me a quick e-mail with the controller type
and brand (noname ok), the drive size and model if known, in a few days I'll
summarize. It might be nice to include CPU type, speed, and BIOS if known.

-- 
Mike Murphy    mrm@Sceard.COM    ucsd!sceard!mrm    +1 619 598 5874