Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!sjsca4!poffen
From: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Re: ISA scsi adapters - request for info
Keywords: scsi, ISA (i.e. AT bus), adapter
Message-ID: <1990Jul11.202403.5928@sj.ate.slb.com>
Date: 11 Jul 90 20:24:03 GMT
References: <2628@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU>
Reply-To: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger)
Distribution: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Organization: Schlumberger Technologies, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 38

In article <2628@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU> herbie@bruce.cs.monash.OZ.AU (Andrew Herbert) writes:

>I am after some hard facts regarding the various scsi adapters available for
>the ISA (AT) bus.  The attributes that come to mind are that come to mind are
>of a card :

I have an Adaptec AHA1542B. I am very happy with it. It supports SCSI plu
2 floppy disks. (The 1540 is SCSI only)

        * What is the (maximum) SCSI to AT bus transfer rate?

This card supports up to 10Mbytes / sec, although most computers won't
tolerate it. This is settable via switches or through S/W. Your
performance is more limited by actual disk throughput however.

        * What special features does the card have, and how does this assist
        throughput?  (e.g. does it have an on-board micro to handle scsi
        transactions?)

It supports synchronous SCSI. It has onboard CPU to map disk specific
geometries to appear like standard MFM controller/disk.

        * Is it compatible with DOS, OS/2 and/or UNIX (ESIX in particular)?

Yes, it is fully compatible. Because of the above mentioned feature, it
need not appear any different to the CPU than any MFM controller. A
specific driver may improve performance slightly in some circumstances.

        * Does the above compatibility arise from special drivers that come with
        the card, or from built-in operating system support?

No drivers are needed.


Russ Poffenberger               DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
Schlumberger Technologies       UUCP:   {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen
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