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From: William Maddox <maddox@CS.Berkeley.EDU>
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Subject: Triton-2 motherboards, fast IDE disk drives
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Date: Thu, 11 Jul 1996 02:02:17 -0700
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I've decided that I need a dedicated Windows95 box, so I'm planning to
move the current SCSI I/O setup on my P90 FreeBSD machine to a new
Triton-II P166 and put an IDE drive in the old box to run Windows.
I'm looking for recommendations on two components: a new mainboard for
the FreeBSD box and a good IDE drive for the Windows box.

1) Mainboard: Triton-II, able to handle a P200, good BIOS.  I'm
partial to the ATX form factor, because I'm planning to buy a new case
and power supply, and it looks like ATX is the future.  How does the
ASUS P/I-XP55T2P4 stack up?  Are there any others I should be considering?
Have the Triton-II bugs been shaken out yet?

2) IDE disk drive: Something in the 1GB range, quiet, reliable, reasonably
fast, and not too expensive.  I've heard many recommendations for the
Quantum Fireball series drives, and I've seen the 1.2GB QM31280FBA advertised
locally for $215, which looks like a good price.  On the other hand, I've
heard a lot of negative comments on Quantum and Western Digital.  What
about IBM and Fujitsu?

Is there a good source of meaningful and reliable information on
comparative disk speeds?  The average access times and buffer-to-host
data rates that the manufacturers quote on their web pages say
absolutely nothing about sustained sequential-access performance.

Thanks for any info,

Bill Maddox
maddox@cs.berkeley.edu