From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Jan 24 10:01:17 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id KAA09850 for questions-outgoing; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:01:17 -0800 (PST) Received: from obie.softweyr.ml.org ([199.104.124.49]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id KAA09827 for ; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:01:13 -0800 (PST) Received: (from wes@localhost) by obie.softweyr.ml.org (8.7.5/8.6.12) id IAA03066; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:41:14 -0700 (MST) Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 08:41:14 -0700 (MST) Message-Id: <199701241541.IAA03066@obie.softweyr.ml.org> From: Wes Peters To: Kory Hamzeh CC: questions@freebsd.org Subject: EIDE vs. SCSI In-Reply-To: References: Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Kory Hamzeh writes: > My question is this: most mother boards have a built in EIDE controller > and IDE drivers are much cheaper then SCSI. What is the approx > performance hit buy using EIDE instead of Wide SCSI for a FreeBSD system? If you're talking about a system with a single disk, not that much. IDE will place a higher load on the system while acessing the disk, which will compete with compute-bound processed, but it doesn't sound like you're really planning on doing much that is compute-bound. > I need to put this system together as cheap and possible but I need it as > fast as possible. I am shooting for a 166mhz pentium with 64meg of ram No, you don't. If this machine is really going to just be a server for mail, dns, ftp, and www, you only need something fast enough to keep up with your ethernet. If you're using 10 Mbps ethernet, save your money on the CPU and buy more RAM instead. An AMD K5/75 will do everything you need just fine, and you should be able to find the CPU for under $50. > and a eide/scsi 2 gig drive. You can, of course, get PCI motherboards with onboard SCSI as well. PCI SCSI controllers using the NCR chips with on-board BIOS are generally available for around $125. In your case, I don't think IDE is really going to hurt your performance unless you expect this server to get really pounded. > One last thing, is there support for IDE CD-ROM in 2.1.5-RELEASE? Yup. Some esoteric IDE CD-ROMs don't work, but most of the mainstream drives seem to work find. The Mitsumi 8X, generally available for cheap, works well. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC http://www.xmission.com/~softweyr softweyr@xmission.com