Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!crdgw1!sungod!davidsen
From: davidsen@sungod.crd.ge.com (William Davidsen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Comparison of ACB2372 vs WD1006V [was Re: Disk controllers for AT]
Keywords: RLL, ESDI, SCSI
Message-ID: <1316@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 21 Jul 89 19:34:10 GMT
References: <579@holin.ATT.COM> <11250083@hpldola.HP.COM> <[4172.3]comp.ibmpc;1@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1190@chansw.UUCP>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: General Electric Corp. R&D, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 24

In article <1190@chansw.UUCP> chan@chansw.UUCP (Jerry H. Chan) writes:
| > Try using that board with SCO Xenix and watch the performance disappear.
| 
| Performance is pretty good on Interactive Systems 386/ix 2.0.x w/HPDD (High
| Performance Disk Driver -- Fast File System optimizations).  Maybe you need
| a change in OS's, eh? ;-).

  The problem is that Adaptek does the buffering in BIOS software, and I
believe that IN/ix does as well. Track buffering in software is not a
new trick, it was part of a BIOS I wrote for CP/M-80 in 1978. It makes a
big improvement in performance on a slow disk, but it does take memory
and CPU.

  I would gladly turn on such a speedup if I had it, but I don't. I'm
hoping to upgrade when SCO gets their act together... right now I can
have the best compiler choice with SCO3.2 and NFS/X11 with Open Desktop
(beta, yet). I will stick with Xenix, it's reliable and I am doing
production. I have tried IN/ix and went with Xenix, topic for another
group, or better yet talk.religion.

  Karl convinced me to try the WD, and I'll report what I see when I get it.
	bill davidsen		(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me