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To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG, nellie@home.com
Subject: Re: hardware 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 06 Nov 1997 08:39:18 BST."
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Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 22:56:22 +1030
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> As Mike Smith wrote:
> 
> > > If you're really putting together a system for FreeBSD, remember to
> > > spend your money in the important areas.  First, throw out the IDE
> > > interface, don't even think about using it.
> 
> > This advice is *seriously* outdated, especially in the light of the 
> > current performance of 3.x systems.
> 
> I haven't been talking about performance.  I have no doubts that the
> performance of an IDE disk subsystem can cope with SCSI (although some
> of the drive vendors still have a tendency to build the better drives
> SCSI-only, and conversely, build IDE drives in the assumption they
> won't have a hard life in front of them).

This paragraph starts out saying one thing, and ends saying another.  
How about either agreeing with me or disagreeing with me?

Yes, it is possible to buy crap disks.  As a general rule, crap disks 
don't last so long in the SCSI marketplace, but you will find them 
there as well.  OTOH, I have yet to see any evidence that IDE disks are 
built "much" worse; MTBF figures are pretty comparable across the field.

> What makes me vehemently vote against IDE is that i've read (part of)
> the ATA specs, and am now amazed that it's even possible that some of
...
> And before you're going to buy anything else than IDE disk drives,
> where the vendors have some experience, well, really go and read the
> specs yourself.  After stopping laughing, you'll probably write the
> same letters as me. :)

You're quite welcome to visit my office sometime; you will, however, 
have to contend with the ATA2, ATA3, ATAPI, SCSI2, SCSI3, several SFF, 
CAM, SMART, APM, PnP and ACPI documents perched or piled on almost 
every horizontal surface.

Yes, I read the standards.  Yes, I have a reasonable idea how messy the 
ATA stuff is, but if you have bothered to follow its evolution you will 
see that it is slowly shedding the worst of the XT disk register set 
legacy and progressing about as fast as it can.  Twelve months ago I 
would have said the same sort of rude things you still do; perhaps some 
reading will help you catch up?

mike