Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen
From: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (Wm E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.periphs
Subject: Re: ESDI vs. SCSI for 486 Disks?
Keywords: ESDI SCSI Disk Controller
Message-ID: <1978@sixhub.UUCP>
Date: 30 Sep 90 23:40:16 GMT
References: <9678@ur-cc.UUCP>
Reply-To: davidsen@sixhub.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: *IX Public Access UNIX, Schenectady NY
Lines: 24

In article <9678@ur-cc.UUCP> mcia@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Mike Ciaraldi) writes:

| Does anyone have any comments on making this choice, or experience
| in this sort of setup? There does not seem to be much of a cost
| difference, so I am looking for the choice that will give the
| best performance.

  In my experience and from talking to 10-15 people running UNIX on a PC
of some kind, and from "big UNIX" I would say access time is far more
important than transfer rate unless you are processing large data sets.
I mean accessing them, not just getting a few records from a big
database.

  Therefore you can go RLL, ESDI or SCSI and most of the performance
changes will come from access time. If you go ESDI we have found at work
that the CompuAdd cached controller is quite good. Not because of the
cache, UNIX does cache quite well and shows only about 2:1 speedup even
with 4MB, but because it seems to handle any ESDI disk we have tried.
Obviously you want a minimum of track buffering...
-- 
bill davidsen - davidsen@sixhub.uucp (uunet!crdgw1!sixhub!davidsen)
    sysop *IX BBS and Public Access UNIX
    moderator of comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 80386 mailing list
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me