From owner-freebsd-hardware Wed Aug 21 20:04:37 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA05677 for hardware-outgoing; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 20:04:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA05669 for ; Wed, 21 Aug 1996 20:04:23 -0700 (PDT) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id MAA13199; Thu, 22 Aug 1996 12:17:56 +0930 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199608220247.MAA13199@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: SCSI again: Asus SC200 vs. Adaptec 2940 ... To: richard@pegasus.com (Richard Foulk) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 1996 12:17:56 +0930 (CST) Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au In-Reply-To: <199608220247.QAA25271@pegasus.com> from "Richard Foulk" at Aug 21, 96 04:46:58 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Richard Foulk stands accused of saying: > > } "depends". the aic7770 (the chip on the 2940) is perhaps a > } slightly more gutsy device than the 53c810. > > Could you elaborate a bit? The aic7770 appears to handle heavier loads better; this may be because it keeps its program in local memory (does it?) rather than needing to fetch an opcode every 1us (as the 53c810 does) across the PCI bus. It may just be due to better device design. General consensus and experience has it that for more than 2 or 3 busy disks the Adaptec part is a better choice. > I meant to consider it more the preferred choice. Currently, the Adaptec > seems to be the preferred board. That's not unreasonable given that a lot of people are building big servers using FreeBSD. But a lot of people go for the NCR controllers for workstations because they're cheap and effective, and FreeBSD's support for these controllers is generally just as good. All through the first quarter or so of this year Justin was struggling with the 'aic' driver, eventually getting it pretty well right; in the same period the 'ncr' driver was rock-solid. As a result of that, if nothing else, I'd say a lot of us prefer the NCR cards 8) > Richard -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[