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From: elf@netcom.com (Marc Singer)
Subject: Re: NCR53C810 PCI SCSI card names?
Message-ID: <elfD3K58t.972@netcom.com>
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
References: <3g6b08$2og@ccshst05.cs.uoguelph.ca>
Distribution: world
Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 02:50:53 GMT
Lines: 46
A friend of mine just went through this. I can offer a pointer to a
FAQ file (I know we all hate this sort of help) and some experience.
First, the FAQ. Check out SCSI-Howto FAQ file that is part of, um,
Linux. It is a really good place to start when trying to understand
SCSI technology and the hardware used to implement it. The author
gives the name of a place in California, Technoland... Hang on I'll
look it up ... Here is an excerpt courtesy of
Drew Eckhardt <drew@cs.colorado.edu>
----------------------------------
People with PCI systems should seriously consider NCR53c810 based
boards. These are bus mastering SCSI controllers, available in Q1 for
about $70 (ie, cheaper than the Adaptec 1520) with larger quantities
being cheaper (I've seen $62 in Q20). In addition to being the
cheapest PCI SCSI boards, the NCR boards were also benchmarked as
faster than the Adaptec 2940 and Buslogic BT-946, and demonstrate
excellent performance under Linux (up to 4M/sec through the file
system ) inspite of the performance optomizations being disabled in
the current driver. The disadvantages of these boards versus the
Buslogics are that they aren't Adaptec 1540 compatable, don't come
with active termination, and to my knowledge are only supported under
DOS+Windows, OS/2, Windows NT, SCO, NeXTstep, and Free BSD.
Currently, the driver is somewhat limited, but appears quite stable
(We've moved several gigabytes of data to NCR based devices with no
problems), surprisingly fast (I've seen 4M/sec through the filesystem)
and will rapidly become more featureful. [The present driver for Linux
is stable and fully featured according to net-rumor.]
The $70 price for the busmastering NCR53c810 boards is not
a typo, includes the standard ASPI/CAM driver package for
DOS, OS/2 and Windows (32 bit access), and other drivers are
available for free download.
If you can't find one at that price, try Technoland at
1-800-292-4500 or 1-408-992-0888 if you live in California.
----------------------------------
But there is more. My friend called this place and was told that the
NCR chip should already be on the motherboard. That's why the adapter
is so cheap! Apparently, the adapter and chip are intimate with the
PCI bus s.t. you get a cheap upgrade as well as blinding performance.
My friend paid $69 corn for his SCSI priviledge.
Marc Singer
elf@netcom.com