*BSD News Article 26269


Return to BSD News archive

Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:8108 comp.windows.x.i386unix:6678
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!tulane!darwin.sura.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!decwrl!usenet.coe.montana.edu!bsd.coe.montana.edu!nate
From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.windows.x.i386unix
Subject: Re: IDE vs. SCSI (was Re: If you were to assemble a new machine...)
Date: 19 Jan 1994 20:57:25 GMT
Organization: Montana State University - Bozeman MT
Lines: 52
Message-ID: <2hk6rl$rc1@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
References: <2hg0ju$j7r@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> <1994Jan15.165808.10213@kf8nh.wariat.org> <HVFcgc2w165w@oasys.pc.my> <CJvrst.4BC@murdoch.acc.virginia.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bsd.coe.montana.edu

In article <CJvrst.4BC@murdoch.acc.virginia.edu>,
Larry Doolittle <doolitt@cebaf4.cebaf.gov> wrote:
>In article <2hg0ju$j7r@homer.cs.mcgill.ca>, storm@cs.mcgill.ca (Marc
>WANDSCHNEIDER) writes:
>> 
>> 	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.
>
>Would one of you SCSI advocates tell me this: would you rather
>have a SCSI controller, or the extra RAM that the same money
>would buy?

> On a US$2x00 machine (I think a lot of people are in this situation)
>   (8M RAM, 486DX-something, one or two 340M drives, 15" accel SVGA,
>   maybe CD-ROM and/or soundcard)

> What do you say????????????????????????????????

What are you planning on doing?  If you plan on doing development with
lots of disk access, then by all means get a SCSI card.  8MB is a good
thing to have and 16MB is better for development, but I'd prefer a
faster disk to more memory in this case since you can pop for a cheaper
tape backup unit as well which is necessary for development.  (Backups
are a good thing to have when your most recent kernel changes wipe out
your hard-drive.)

Second of all, if you are doing serious development get an additional
8MB of memory and bag the CD-ROM and the soundcard.  But, that's not
always an option.  It all depends on what you are trying to do.  If you
want it to play with, and plan on only running applications more memory
will be a better thing.  If you plan on doing development you'll want
good I/O speed and the ability to add more disk easily in the future. 
The SCSI card is a very good thing to have.

Finally, it's a heck of alot cheaper to put in a good SCSI card in a
machine than 8MB of memory, so tradeoff and get 4MB of memory AND a SCSI
card.


Nate


-- 
nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu     |  Freely available *nix clones benefit everyone,
nate@cs.montana.edu          |  so let's not compete with each other, let's
work #: (406) 994-4836       |  compete with folks who try to tie us down to
home #: (406) 586-0579       |  proprietary O.S.'s (Microsloth) - Me