Re: Please Advise: SCSI vs. IDE (fwd)

Marko Siladin (msiladin@athos.mas.vcu.edu)
Sat, 28 Sep 1996 08:49:45 -0400 (EDT)

>
> Christoph Lameter wrote:
> >
> > Stay away from SCSI at all. Its complicated, slow and fails often. IDE drives
> > are easier to troubleshoot and the usually work. IDE drives are faster.
> >
> > KKlein99@aol.com wrote:
> > : 486 SX 33 Mhz
> > : 16 Meg RAM
> > : SVGA Trident video card and Samsung Monitor
> > : 170 Meg HD primary
> > : 250 Meg HD secondary
> > : soundcard
> > : Adaptec 1542CP (PNP disabled with switches on card)
> > : Toshiba 3401 2X CD Drive external
> > :
> > : I want to add a 2 Gig HD to this config. Should I put it on the SCSI card or
> > : should I replace one of the IDE HD's??? What would be faster??? I want to
> > : put usenet newsgroups on it and allow user's to read/search...
>
> SCSI, on the other hand, has been absolutely and utterly reliable. My
> 486/100 EISA box with Adaptec 2742 SCSI bussmaster adapter just blows
> the doors off a Pentium 90 box when subjected to my standard I/O test
> suite. It's quite subjective, but you attempt to simultaneously:
>
This is a tough issue. It really it really depends on several things.
1) If your controller is a busmastering SCSI controller - I believe that
the 1542 is not (but I might be wrong)
2) How many users will be accessing your SCSI devices simultaniously.
3) Will you add aditional SCSI devices to your system in the future?

if the answer is 1)- I got busmastering
2)- many users are accesing the SCSI devices
3)- Yes I'll add more SCSI devices

Then the solution is GET a SCSI disk (a reliable one).

otherwise your most likely better of with EIDE - with a small aside here -
if you plan to build a serious multiuser/multitasking system in the future
or (like me) yust like to play with cool stuff -> get SCSI.
One nice thing is that all devices on a SCSI system take just one
interrupt - so you won't have problems adding up to 7 devices.

Good luck and
be well

-- 
...Marko
------------------------///////////-\\\\\\\\\\\--------------------------
                              (O) ^ ^ (O)
Marko Siladin                    | | |         VCU, Dept. of Math. Science
msiladin@athos.mas.vcu.edu        \ /         Division of Computer Science
            http://athos.mas.vcu.edu:8080/grad/marko/home.html
------------------------\\\\\\\\\\\-///////////--------------------------