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From: yon%smltalk.cbm.dec.com@decwrl.dec.com (David A. Yon)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: 550Kb/sec on IDE ST1144A???
Message-ID: <1991May8.144034.4330@hollie.rdg.dec.com>
Date: 8 May 91 14:40:34 GMT
Sender: news@hollie.rdg.dec.com (Mr News)
Reply-To: yon%smltalk.cbm.dec.com@decwrl.dec.com (David A. Yon)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 42

Hey all,

	I've just purchased a 33Mhz 386 clone, which included a 124meg IDE
drive (the Seagate ST1144A) with a generic IDE controller.  In the course
of researching this purchase (calling Gateway, Treasure Chest, etc) I was
qouted data transfer rates of around 1.0-1.2mb/sec on IDE drives.  Yet
with this drive I'm only getting around 550Kb/sec!

	I purchased from a local dealer at a computer show, and when I called
him about this problem, he said that he had never seen IDE drives do much
more than 550Kb/sec.

	Now, I'm upgrading from a 12mhz 286 which had the ST296N/ST-02 SCSI
combination, and I was getting 808Kb/sec out of that.  (granted I've improved
the access time from 28ms to 20ms, but I'm not sure which will have a larger
effect on the performance).

	So...

	1) Does anyone have this combination?  What are your experiences?

	2) Does anyone know the typical performance of IDE drives/controllers?
	   Would the setup of the IDE card matter (there were precious few 
	   jumpers on the card)

	3) Does anyone know what a jumper labeled "IRQ 14 buffered/unbuffered" on
 	   the IDE card would mean?  The strange thing here is that the
	   jumper is described as either shorting pins 1-2, or shorting pins 2-3.
	   Yet there was no jumper installed at all.

	I remember that the ST-02 has the all-important "0 wait-state" jumper,
which when enabled made a big difference in the transfer rate of my drives.  I
didn't see anything like that on my IDE card.

	Thanks in advance for any help...

David Yon
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