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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:8036 comp.windows.x.i386unix:6620 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!bunyip.cc.uq.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!news.kei.com!bloom-beacon.mit.edu!mcrcim.mcgill.edu!homer.cs.mcgill.ca!storm From: storm@cs.mcgill.ca (Marc WANDSCHNEIDER) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.windows.x.i386unix Subject: Re: If you were to assemble a new machine... Date: 18 Jan 1994 06:46:22 GMT Organization: SOCS, McGill University, Montreal, Canada Lines: 49 Message-ID: <2hg0ju$j7r@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> References: <1994Jan15.165808.10213@kf8nh.wariat.org> <HVFcgc2w165w@oasys.pc.my> NNTP-Posting-Host: mnementh.cs.mcgill.ca In article <HVFcgc2w165w@oasys.pc.my>, Othman Ahmad <othman@oasys.pc.my> wrote: >bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org (Brandon S. Allbery) writes: > >> >> Depends on what your limitations are. A SCSI host adapter takes one bus slot > >An IDE controller needs ZERO bus slot. It uses the ones on the floppy >controller, and if you need another IDE disk, just parallel the ATBUS >connector. wonderful rebuttal there---not ten lines from now, you tell people to go buy an ide controller if they want reasonable performance.... >It has nothing to do with IDE definition. It is more due to the lack of >bus mastering controller. If you want performance, equivalent to SCSI, >buy an IDE bus mastering controller. You'll still get the advantage of >compatibility and easy upgrade but now it almost cost as much as a SCSI system. > With that controller, I can buy an extra hard disk. actually, it has everything to do with the ide definition. the defintion, as far as i'm aware [i've been wrong before ;-)] does not have any mention of dma in it at all---all i/o is polled. now, i know that certain vendors have amanged to get around this by using various tricks on their motherboards. however, i suspect that these are BIOS level imporvements, and thus only operating systems like dos, that use the bios, or nt, that will actively detect them, will use them. otherwise, i suspect that the driver one is using will still just do polled i/o. the only good things about ide drives is that they are cheap. for the average windows user, and to a lesser extent, os/2 and nt user, this isn't too bad. however, for any multitasking operating system [including os/2 and nt], they start to beome a major limiting factor.... my machine perked up -big- time when i moved to scsi. marc 'em. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Wandschneider Seattle, WA Barney the Dinosaur sings! You faint... Barney sings! Barney sings! --More-- You Die... --More--