From owner-freebsd-questions  Wed Sep 27 06:42:11 1995
Return-Path: owner-questions
Received: (from root@localhost)
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id GAA00786
          for questions-outgoing; Wed, 27 Sep 1995 06:42:11 -0700
Received: from croute.com (ishm2.croute.com [199.97.106.1])
          by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id GAA00781
          ; Wed, 27 Sep 1995 06:42:06 -0700
Received: from bldg1.croute.com by croute.com (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA00959; Wed, 27 Sep 95 08:45:37 CDT
Received: from COMPUROUTE/SpoolDir by bldg1.croute.com (Mercury 1.13);
    Wed, 27 Sep 95 8:45:56 +600
Received: from SpoolDir by COMPUROUTE (Mercury 1.13); Wed, 27 Sep 95 8:45:54 +600
From: "Larry Dolinar" <LARRYD@bldg1.croute.com>
Organization:  CompuRoute, Inc.
To: questions@freebsd.org
Date:          Wed, 27 Sep 1995 08:45:52 +600 CDT
Subject:       Re: PC configuration advice wanted.
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.22
Message-Id: <5500BBB14F0@bldg1.croute.com>
Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

Thus spake "Doug S." <serges@umr.edu> (Wed, 27 Sep 1995):

|  
|  
|  > David Clear stands accused of saying:
|  > > I'm very close to buying what Gateway here in the UK call a
|  > > a "P5-90 Premium Multimedia".  This has:
|  > > 
|  > >     P90 Processor
|  > >     16MB EDO RAM
|  > >     1Gb EIDE disk
|  > 
|  > DO NOT BUY IDE DISK!  Especially with the rest of this config; IDE disk 
|  > (and so little of it) would be a Really Bad Idea.
|  
|  Okay, so why is this such a "Really Bad Idea". Opinions aside.
|  Does FBSD have trouble with EIDE configurations? 
|  
|  SCSI is nice, but its margin over EIDE isnt all that big. This is my
|  opinion, anyway.

IDE is limited to 2 devices, EIDE 4.  AFAIK, it also adds overhead to the 
CPU, as do non-busmastering SCSI cards.  Support for the CD-ROMs is only 
now appearing in this OS, and it's questionable whether there will ever be 
support for IDE-style tape drives (such as there are).

Go with busmastering SCSI or SCSI-2 (7 devices), or Fast Wide SCSI-2 (15
devices), and you'll have more flexibility in the long run: hard drives, 
scanners, tape...

my $.02,
larry