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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!ray.com!news.ray.com!rayssd!galaxia!dave From: dave@galaxia.network23.com (David H. Brierley) Subject: SCSI controller recomendations requested Organization: Galaxia Computer Systems Message-ID: <Cw3nuw.E8@galaxia.network23.com> Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 03:18:32 GMT Lines: 34 I am looking to put a new SCSI controller in my machine and I wanted to get some opinions first. The machine is a 486DX/40, ISA/VLB bus, 16 MB and I am running FreeBSD 1.1.5.1 on it. The reason I am looking to put a new SCSI board in it is that my existing board was borrowed from the tech lab at work and they want it back. I think I have narrowed the search to the following three boards: Adaptec 1542CF (ISA) Bus Logic BT545S (ISA) Bus Logic BT445S (VLB) Does anybody have any opinions about these cards, either good or bad? Are there any other cards I should consider? I know that support for some new cards has been added in the last couple of releases but I wasn't sure that the cards (ST-01, TMC-950) had as much functionality as the cards listed above. The controller has to be able to support a 1.6 GB disk, a tape drive, and two floppies. I am also concerned about the speed of the card, I don't want the SCSI controller to become the bottle neck. One thing that I am really confused about is the issue of ISA vs VLB for the SCSI controller. A friend (who has been using PCs for a long time) told me to avoid VLB for the disk controller but obviously some people are using VLB because otherwise why would FreeBSD include support for it? Should I use the VLB version? I.e. would it be faster? I have a VLB video card already installed. The only other cards in the machine are a serial card and a serial/parallel card. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. If you reply directly to me I will post a summary of the responses. -- David H. Brierley Work: dhb@ssd.ray.com 3B1 Hacker Extraordinaire Home: dave@galaxia.network23.com