Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!merch!cpe!adaptex!neese
From: neese@adaptex.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: ESDI or SCSI or RLL?
Message-ID: <25100010@adaptex>
Date: 28 Mar 90 20:26:00 GMT
References: <18758@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Lines: 38
Nf-ID: #R:boulder.Colorado.EDU:18758:adaptex:25100010:000:2057
Nf-From: adaptex.UUCP!neese    Mar 28 14:26:00 1990


>|SCSI is more of a pain to move to due to the fact that there is not a standard
>|in the industry for it.  Adaptec, WD, Future Domain, and others all
>|have a SCSI adapter boards, but none of them are compatible with the others.
>
>Is this ever going to get better? I refuse to consider SCSI as long
>as things are screwed up this way.

Sorry Phil, I don't consider this to be screwed up.  All these various vendors
would have to sacrifice some performance to use the others interface.  If
Adaptec used the WD interface, we would have to give up scatter/gather and
command queuing, if WD used our interface, they would have to implement said
features.  If both WD and Adaptec used the Future Domain interface we would
give up a bunch of performance.
Now don't get me wrong, I love standards, but I don't think a standard should
be allowed to inhibit the potential performance of anyone's product.  IBM has
just announced thier SCSI adapters and we have yet another interface to be
concerned with.  They chose an interface they felt would be best suited to the
application they designed for.
I also feel that compatibility should not inhibit those of us who long for
some really good disk performance for our high end 386/486/RISC/CISC machines.
You might say that ESDI gives this performance level.  And to some degree you
are correct, but I have to be the one that has to deal with the nightmare
of when a disk manufacturer introduces a 2xMhz ESDI drive and tell a customer
that if you want that drive you will have to throw away your current controller
and replace it with a new controller in order to run this wonderful high
performance drive.  To me this is absolutely ridiculous.  I would rather deal
with SCSI and all the permeations of the implementation that to tell a
customer who has a zillion controllers in inventory he has to scrap them.

This is all my own opinion.


			Roy Neese
			Adaptec Central Field Applications Engineer
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