From owner-freebsd-chat Tue Dec 14 10:54:38 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from smtp03.primenet.com (smtp03.primenet.com [206.165.6.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 275F314A2F for ; Tue, 14 Dec 1999 10:54:31 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from tlambert@usr02.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp03.primenet.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id LAA19455; Tue, 14 Dec 1999 11:53:38 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr02.primenet.com(206.165.6.202) via SMTP by smtp03.primenet.com, id smtpdAAAVua4SL; Tue Dec 14 11:53:26 1999 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr02.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA19833; Tue, 14 Dec 1999 11:53:58 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199912141853.LAA19833@usr02.primenet.com> Subject: Re: dual 400 -> dual 600 worth it? To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 18:53:55 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, dscheidt@enteract.com, noslenj@swbell.net, chat@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991213200556.0473c1e0@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Dec 13, 99 08:33:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org > >I will let you in on a "secret": SCSI drives cost more because > >that's what the market will bear, based on their performance > >characteristics relative to IDE. > > Unfortunately, I don't believe that the price/performance > ratio of UltraSCSI is anywhere near that of Ultra-66 ATAPI. Who said anything about that? The market will bear higher prices from SCSI, so SCSI costs more. > >They cost the same to manufacture; it doesn't matter what mask > >you use to burn your 1 square inch ASIC. > > Which is the problem. You're being charged a premium for hardware > that's very similar, due to lower volume. And SCSI has higher command > latency than IDE. SCSI drives usually make up for this with tagged > command queueing, hidden elevator seeking, and larger on-drive > caches. Sometimes this is a clear win, but sometimes it is not. Sorry, but Bzzzt. SCSI is actually cheaper in Europe than the US. It is a function of market pressures. I can put you in contact with the IBM Santa Teresa (disk drive manufacturing) people if you need me to... > The ideal thing would be a hybrid: a drive which supported the > full SCSI command repertoire but didn't have the overhead of > selection, arbitration, bus settling time, signal deskewing, > etc. Yeah, that's called "ATAPI". All IDE CDROMs are SCSI CDROMS in disguise. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message