Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dogie.macc.wisc.edu!uwvax!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!nis!quest!starfire!john
From: john@starfire.UUCP (John Lind)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.nsc.32k
Subject: Re: Looking for SCSI board
Summary: one more feature
Message-ID: <577@starfire.UUCP>
Date: 29 Nov 89 22:39:25 GMT
References: <51900003@ENI.Prime.COM> <576@starfire.UUCP>
Organization: Starfire Consultings Services, Mpls., MN
Lines: 14


Argh!  Concerning the Ciprico Rimfire 1500, I forgot a very important
feature -- it supports Scatter-write/Gather-read for all you folks
with a paged memory scheme.  You don't need to use a bounce buffer for
this guy -- just give him the list of starting addresses and lengths
for the physical memory fragments of the buffer, and it will go to it.
For Unix users, this is only important for the raw (character) device
interface, but if you are using your SCSI bus for tape, this is very
important indeed -- things like tar and dd run much better if you
don't have to bounce the data through a contiguous memory buffer, and
who wants to wasted 32-126K of memory, anyway?
-- 
	       John Lind, Starfire Consulting Services
E-mail: john@starfire.MN.ORG     USnail:   PO Box 13001, Mpls MN  55414