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Date:      Wed, 18 Nov 1998 19:28:53 -0600
From:      David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net>
To:        "Patrick Seal" <patseal@hyperhost.net>
Cc:        "FBSDQ" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: SCSI Adapters 
Message-ID:  <199811190128.TAA02696@n4hhe.ampr.org>
In-Reply-To: Message from "Patrick Seal" <patseal@hyperhost.net>  of "Tue, 17 Nov 1998 17:13:39 EST." <000001be1277$874e0cc0$0200a8c0@asus.hyperhost.net> 

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"Patrick Seal" writes:
> Of all currently supported SCSI Adapters (2.2.7) which brand is considered
> the best?  Which brand has the best reliability etc.  Judging from FreeBSD
> support, it would be either Adaptec/Buslogic. I currently have a Buslogic
> LT thingy, but It's not supported by FreeBSD.

The standard answer in the past has been, "Adaptec 2940 family (aic7870,
aic7880, aic789x) are the highest preformance, most carefully tweaked
FreeBSD SCSI drivers. But the Symbios cards are cheap and you'd have to
measure closely to detect the difference in performance (if any)."

Possibly the biggest difference between my Adaptec 2940 and Asus SC875 
is the Adaptec has low level format and surface scanning utilities 
built into its BIOS, where the Symbios based card requires DOS-based 
uitilities to do the same. Am told Tekram's Symbios cards have these 
utilities in their BIOS.

Lately with CAM, tag queuing, and softupdates enabled I've noticed quite
a performance increase on my SC875 mounted HD. Currently I only have 
tape drives on the 2940.

Not shopping very hard, Asus SC875 (Symbios Ultra-Wide w/FLASH BIOS on
card) sells for $110. Cards based on the Symbios '810 (narrow, no BIOS on
card, you have to have it on your MB) are about $60. And '815 (narrow
but with BIOS on card) can usually be found for about the same $60.


--
David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@nospam.hiwaay.net
=====================================================================
The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its
capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system.



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